My first meeting was with media artist Sharon Daniel. Sharon uses new media techniques to create interactive mixed media installations. She creates work that highlights social injustices and inequalities: this is art that aims to challenge opinions and change minds. We discussed how her approach differs from straightforward show-and-tell documentaries (it is all about the encounter and the opportunity for the viewer to make their own way through the material). Sharon told me about a woman who had been jailed for 5 years for passing a bad cheque and how Sharon’s way of presenting this material had made people rethink their views on the justice system.
Over an extremely fine Impossible (vegetarian) burger in an extremely photogenic part of town we also discussed the rise of the internet and big tech. My take home from our meeting was to think again about linear narratives: hypertext and the internet already encourage non-linear browsing and the hopping from one link to another; but this can be very fragmented and splintered. At the other end of the spectrum is the extended essay in which you start at the beginning and hope to still be there at the end. Is there a middle way through the maze?
Our enthusiasms ran away with us and I completely forgot to take the obligatory pic of self + victim.
I then headed a few blocks away (I am picking up the jargon with ease) to visit Shamsher Virk and the ZERO1 project, which is based in a magnificent 1920’s former cinema run by arts organisation Gray Area. There is a huge stage, plus seating area and upstairs project room where classes are taught on the latest tech(niques). ZERO1 is a community enterprise focussed on inclusion and opportunity, and part of our conversation centred on the question of who is designing the tech that is now central to our lives, and whose purpose does it serve? Shamsher told me about the Institute for The Future and the Centre for Humane Technology who are both actively researching this issue.
Shamsher also told me that many new media artists are now moving beyond simply the early adoption of the latest tech and seeing what it can do, towards a more nuanced approach in which they consider and critique the tech that is coming onstream. I loved Shamsher’s example of Lauren McCarthy who installed herself as a real life Alexa for a household, controlling their fridges, lights, heating and more. Super creepy, but art as it should be: very effective at making its point. I was also particularly taken by a project that Shamsher described in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests. Some statues had been toppled during the protests, and artists used augmented reality tech to visualise alternative statues onto the now empty plinths.
This time I remembered the photo.
Thanks Sharon and Shamsher for two fascinating conversations.
