Interview with Eryk Salvaggio, – summing us up nicely. Thank you!
With the opening of swissnex San Francisco’s Re:Dada exhibition, we were pleased to be introduced to W3rkH0f media arts, a Swiss-American collaboration of Jana Honegger and Kent Clelland. They performed sonic and visual remixes of Dada sound poetry and visuals, as well as premiered their performance terms&conditions, designed with their own proprietary software. They also contributed an installation, DaDA Karaoke Machine, where attendees can sing along to Dada sound poetry. We were drawn to the pair’s work because it is rooted in intersections of technology and community. You can experience their work, and others, at the swissnex Gallery; the Re:Dada exhibition runs through Nov. 30.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
We are media artists; we invent, create, synthesize and inspire.
CREATE-ing media art with sociological or political themes, our installations and performances aim to promote awareness, engage communication, and facilitate dialogue in a society which is, through increasing digitization and globalization, drifting dangerously close to a tipping point.
SYNTHESIZE-ing social networks, W3rkH0f media arts creates art works by applying Social Synthesis. Social Synthesis can be explained as creating new social circles where they have yet to form organically (although perhaps should have). Inciting awareness of inherent commonalities between groups who would otherwise sail past one another in the darkness of their own filter-bubbles.
INSPIRE-ing audiences to (re-)examine, question, or even change their relationship to their (digital- / societal- / environmental- / political- ) ecosystem. W3rkH0f media arts inspires change through playful awareness.
INVENT-ing media technologies, be they real-time video software, audio programs, or interactive control systems: W3rkH0f media arts invents their own platforms to realize their artistic visions.
WHY DO YOU DO IT?
We believe in:
1) the innate goodness of people
2) the power of media technology to connect and instigate exchange
3) our role as artists to use media technology to instigate exchange amongst innately good people.
WHAT’S NEXT?
We would like to scale our media works to larger and/or more targeted audiences.
Our interactive video installation, “DaDA Karaoke Machine,” (currently exhibited in the swissnex Gallery) was developed especially for Re:Dada and is exceptional in that it is designed less as an instance of Social Synthesis and more as an artifact of our live performance, “Randensonata.”
A more typical example of Social Synthesis is our installation “Telepresence Lounge,” which was exhibited in the Kunsthaus Zürich for the Swiss Design Convention ‘Design+Design.’ The Telepresence Lounge connects multiple site-specific installations by swapping artfully processed group-selfies across time and space: connecting related parties to one another by opening a hole in time.
Additionally, W3rkH0f media arts will continue creating culturally relevant works based on both modern and vintage technologies. Like, presenting computer art live on-stage as with our interactive performance ‘terms&conditions’ which premiered at the RE:Dada exhibition opening event. This 15 minute audio-visual performance utilizes our proprietary software products. Digital noise music and real-time DSP vocal duets combined with live video collages using images from the creative commons community. With this piece, W3rkH0f media arts denounces the blanket abuse of consumer’s digital rights in today’s app-driven economy and asks: “Where do I unsign?”
Eryk Salvaggio, nextrends, 21st Nov 2016
