Bay
Area Digitalists
Area Bay Digitalists
Bay Area Digitalists was presented at Root Division in November 2015 as part of the 2nd Saturday Exhibition Series Curated by: Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen Presented at: Root Division, San Francisco, CA Exhibition Dates: November 4 - December 5, 2015 Exhibiting Artists: Benjamin De Kosnik Scott Kildall Laura Hyunjhee Kim Kadet Kuhne Al Grumet Tim Roseborough Smith|Allen (Stephanie Smith & Bryan Allen)
Root Division is pleased to present Bay Area Digitalists as part of our 2nd Saturday Exhibition Series. Highlighting the work of emerging and midcareer artists and curators, our monthly exhibitions offer space and time to collectively explore pressing issues in contemporary art and culture. With this exhibition we are engaging in the expanding conversation about the evolving impact of technology on our civic, artistic, and personal lives. Root Division is thrilled to join the dialogue of the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s exhibition, New Experiments in Art and Technology, which is running concurrently just a few blocks away. We are eager to engage in explorations of new technologies as we plan and develop our own digital and fabrication workshops, opening to the public in Spring of 2016. Thank you to Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen, for her curatorial vision, and to each of the artists for their contribution to this important conversation. Amy Cancelmo Art Programs Director Root Division November 2015
1131 Mission Street, SF, CA 94103 rootdivision.org / 415.863.7668
Curatorial Statement Bay Area Digitalists is a group exhibition highlighting digital artists whose work is inspired by the deep history and culture of technology in the Bay Area. From the hand-built computers of the Homebrew Computer Club that eventually launched Apple Computers, to the personal ads and resourcesharing of Craigslist, to the pink mustachioed rideshare of Lyft, San Francisco has been an incubator for creative use of technology. As conversations about the negative impact of the tech industry on local artists persist, it’s a relevant time to highlight the long history of technology in the Bay Area (long before startup rent hikes and Google busses) and the incredible influence it has had on digital artists in the region. Within new media art, the Bay Area Digitalist’s work embodies the particular characteristics of Bay Area tech: entrepreneurship, experimentation, invention, access, and a DIY sensibility. Based in the Bay Area, artists in the exhibition employ a variety of tools and outputs to explore the very nature of the technologies used and their impact on society, interaction, and daily life. Tim Roseborough is a digital artist and musician with a rich understanding of art history and creative movements that informs his work. Mining the past and the subconscious of our society to highlight profound, but under-recognized notions and ideas, his animations, installations, websites, games, and
videos focus on cultural phenomena and artifacts that have been lost, ignored, or forgotten. Scott Kildall creates algorithms, sculptures, performances, and videos, which repurpose networks of communication and production. His work frequently explores themes of future-thinking and translation between the virtual and the real. Mining from a variety of sources, Kildall reinterprets data into visual object or aggregates it into new uses and meanings—often creating artworks that are also useful, informational, and playful. Smith|Allen brings together an architectural designer and a sculpture and installation artist to create site-responsive, large scale works and spaces that investigate natural, technological, and constructed systems within the built environment. Their work utilizes digital fabrication processes pushed to human scale—along with traditional art and design methods and materials—to bring attention to both body and space. Kadet Kuhne is a media artist whose work spans the audiovisual spectrum, taking form in album releases, installation, film, performance, interactivity, 3D printing and 2D print. Her work is an extension of experimental practice in an age of hypercommunication and digital saturation. Heightening tensions between motion and stasis, Kuhne translates sound into sculpture, video into 3D still, and endurance performance into infinite looping video.
Laura Hyunjhee Kim works with video, performance, and the Internet to explore how digital-technology reconfigures everyday life and influences human behavior. Kim pokes at rituals, obsession, and insecurity through saturated, twitchy images. Often installing herself as the central figure, her short narratives highlight the isolation and ridiculousness of ubiquitous tech compulsion. Al Grumet’s narrative installations are fueled by wandering journeys through the Bay Area’s contemporary urban landscapes. Through photography and speculation, Grumet extracts fragments and impressions from each trek, and weaves them into colorful stories of the human condition. His 2D collages employing alternate layers of digital and analogue techniques are paired with installation and the detritus of the tech industry via sculptures made from TechShop off-casts that harken back to assemblages of Beat sculptors. Benjamin De Kosnik’s work disassembles and reassembles systems, processes, and patterns to create “artifacts from a changed future”. Research, algorithms, code, piracy, sculpture, gaming, performance, video are all found in De Kosnik’s toolbox for creating works that give a sense of a rewritten history. But the new worlds he proposes are at once both equalized and distopic, simplistic and over-complicated. The Bay Area Digitalists in this exhibition all employ play, open access, and relatable visual appeal to engage the audience. Their works are multi-layered and multi-platform, encouraging a full exploration by the
viewer so that audience and artwork are inseparable, symbiotic. A thread of cynical humor is embedded into much of the works as the artists tap into the seemingly infinite virtual, but very human, world.
Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen
Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen is a curator, consultant, and project-based artist. A San Francisco native with over 15 years of in-depth experience in the performing and visual arts, Rhiannon’s curatorial focus is on projects that push boundaries of scale, scope, medium, venue, and dialogue. Her crossdiscipline personal work engages symbols, identity, communication, and the unseen. In 2013 she founded A Simple Collective: an organization dedicated to fostering creative independence for professionals, and professional independence for creatives, and ASC Projects: an experimental exhibition space in the Mission. In 2015, she co-founded the Pacific Felt Factory arts complex and launched the RE[FRAME] Arts Industry Conference, hosted by the Museum of the African Diaspora. In addition to her ongoing curatorial work at ASC Projects, Rhiannon has curated exhibitions at Pro Arts in Oakland, Root Division in San Francisco, and SCOPE in New York. In spring of 2015, she curated Hiraeth: 3.9 Collective Searches for Home at the Thacher Gallery at USF. Her shows and words have been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED Arts, The New Asterisk Magazine, SFArts, and Art Practical, among other publications. Deeply involved with community-building through the arts, she is on the Advisory Board for the Women’s Environmental Artist Directory, the Curatorial Committee for Root Division, and the Advisory Committee for Sites Unseen.
Bay Area Digitalists
If we think of the late 20th century new media and digital artists, we start to see virtuality and the Internet play an imperative role in the production of artwork in new media and digital art. But there are new issues that have bubbled up with the evolution of artistic practices such as ownership, reproduction, and creative commons use. While tools abound, there’s so much more at stake when thinking of artists that create outside of what may be pegged as traditional practices versus creating outside of the economic ecosystems commonly known in the art world. We are at a point in history where artists have the opportunity to do something that can be disseminated and dispersed (sometimes freely) with much more reach than ever before. In Michael Rush’s text, New Media in Late 20th Century Art, he states, In art, visual literacy is no longer limited to the ‘the object.’ It must embrace the fluid, ever-changing universe that exists inside the computer and the new world the computer facilitates: an interactive art world that can be virtual in its reality and radically interdependent in its incorporation of ‘the viewer’ into the completion of the work of art. When Duchamp suggested that the work of art depended on the viewer to complete the concept, little did he know that by the end of the century some works of art (such as interactive films) would literally depend on the viewer, not only to complete them, but to initiate them and given them context (170).
This book was written in 1993. Many of the reflections were not only prescient, but are more true today than ever before.
From the counter cultures of the late 1960s to our current hyper connectivity via social media, the Bay Area remains a place of technological advancement and experimentation. Collectives such as La Mamelle, Inc./ Art Com to the Survival Research Labs have long served as the foundation for artists to craft artworks that serve as cultural criticism and aim to address our hopes, fears, and desires around digital technology. From Jim Campbell to Sonya Rappaport, the Bay Area has its share of artists taking functional tools and subverting their use. In the exhibition the Bay Area Digitalists curated by Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen, the selection of artists not only speaks to a spectrum of practices, but is a representation of various perspectives of the effects of digital technology. Patterns play a huge role in Benjamin De Kosnik’s works and include a prominent use of text to convey a specific message. His recent work Valentine Homography (2015) reflects our collective obsession with algorithms and desire to find a match regardless of how futile the effort might be. The banality of finding the perfect match based on codes and programming that then conjures a match for us parallels with recommender systems and dating applications. Machines sift through our data selves to provide the most desirable output. Yet the purpose of artificial intelligence entails making life convenient and predictable. We romanticize the notion of serendipity, but that is not what capitalism wants of us. De Kosnik’s work is meditation of humans compulsion to find patterns that appeases the void.
Predictability can only do so much for the human spirit, but patterns can also be seen in data. Whether it is creating an a stock-trading algorithm to resurrecting Duchamp’s chess pieces as a 3D printed set, Scott Kildall’s work expands and interrogates the conventional use of data and programming in our contemporary world. Although playful and whimsical, the underlying message behind his work stems from not asking enough questions or accepting things at face value. Accepting data as a truism for difficult issues such as the Bay Area housing crisis to gun violence in his work Bad Data, he work challenges our own ability to source information, research for ourselves, and think deeply about the information we are given in a digital and mobileladen world. But the materiality of his work also speaks to a craftsmanship and attention to detail that some many not readily associate with digital art. The translation is also the aspect of Kildall’s works that vacillates between the realms of In Real Life/Away from Keyboard and a reminder that the gap between the physical and digital realms is narrowing. Video artist and internet archivist, Laura Hyunjhee Kim reaches into the more comical side of the bottomless and mobius strip of the Internet. As an important and interesting aside, Kim was born and raised in the US, moved to South Korea and returned to the US for her undergraduate and graduate studies. I mention this in large part due to the fact that Kim’s work encapsulates a sensibility of pop culture from both regions. Her videos offer a meta ventriloquism that harks back to the likes of Max Headroom,
but with a visual touch of Lisa Frank. Kim has taken what may seem trite such a flashy, vibrant colors and memetic tropes and reinvented them through the lens of video to explore the confluence of digital and analog mediums. In Control Freak (2012), Kim stands against a backdrop of colorful pixels and half of her face covered in what appears to look like a digital mask. Her image and movements are accompanied by a slow, bass thumping song with a languid voiceover asking the listener to command and control Z, which serves as the keyboard shortcut to undo a command. Or “E-S-C when you can.” The playfulness of the work is a refreshing use of moving images, sound, digital, and analog that can easily mesmerize a viewer. The obsession with the visual often times precludes the use of sound as a medium. Kadet Kuhne’s work is an exemplary practice that delves into the sense that remains vigilant. Sound is all around us, even when we sleep. It is the way we are warned of impending danger. But it also is a vast and untapped medium that must be experienced first hand to knows its relationship to the environment, architecture, and others around us. Kuhne’s Matter of Mind (2012) is both haunting and sublime. The work calls upon the viewer to not only see, but, most importantly, to listen. It’s as if Kuhne composed the sounds the human body makes at a molecular and subatomic level. The combination of installation work that, much like Kildall’s work, incorporates the use of 3D printing, Kuhne pulls inspiration from biological and organic systems to create works that almost seemed pulled from the scientist’s slide and
pumped into various forms of digital technologies to create something rather transcendent. The vast and overwhelming images that riddle the Internet seems to grow at an exponential rate. With self publishing platforms such as new hive and the reblogging and endless scroll functionality of online spaces such as tumblr, it should come as no surprise that Al Grumet’s digital collage work seems to be an amalgamation of the online remnants of the physical world made digital. With Grumet’s work, it’s challenging to not see the influence of the Dada movement. The chaotic nature of the world with seems to find some semblance in Grumet’s digital canvases that serve as a commentary to our seemingly throw-away culture and consumerism. The clean and minimalist look found in Tim Roseborough’s work entails such complete and deliberate thought that it is the type of work that does not fit any real genre of art. As an artist working in metapractice, there is a conversation of practice within his practice pulled from the spirit of art history that shows up, not only in his practice, but in the way the artwork is displayed, exhibited, and disseminated. Roseborough’s iconography, logographic writing system, and engagement in semiotics and semantics reaches into the way that language has evolved over time to symbols. While emojis have demonstrated their staying power in popular culture, Englyph proves to be a sophisticated and elegant way of re-interpreting a language and text we already know, but morphed into something unfamiliar.
Stephanie Smith and Bryan Allen of Smith|Allen incorporate the use of 3D printing technology and rendering in digital space that then becomes a part of the environment or space. Smith|Allen’s work looks at how we can better form a relationship with physical space by exploring materiality and the pliable nature of materials. While 3D printing technology may not be able to make home that can weather a storm, the duo’s work speaks to a longing of being close to nature even if through visual forms that engage in a type of biomimicry. As engineers and programmers fashion ways for us to engage in virtuality and simulation, Smith|Allen absorb themselves in a practice that simply cannot deny our connection to biological and natural forms. The provocative and destabilizing aspect of this genre is the ability to shift and break from traditional, capitalist models of the art economy. The artists for this particular exhibition are not creating works that necessarily participate in some free market enterprise. Rather, the works serve as a way for calling attention to different forms of engagement and perception of the age art object. There is no easy way to pinpoint the lack or absence of a commodity, which makes this particular genre probably the most fascinating of them all. With such a wide array of practices, what is the taxonomy and genealogy that can be called upon to classify, historicize, and document these works and performances. Or the allure of having a work go on ad infinitum if it belongs to social media for all to contribute and participate to in perpetuity. What are the ways in which the boundaries
are not only softened and blurred, but eradicated? These particular digitialists are creating artworks that take into account, not just the classic noble sense of vision, but the use of the body in space and how works in the digital realm manifest out into public space for mass consumption. In connection with the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s New Experiments in Art & Technology (N.E.A.T) exhibition that showcases artists in the same genre, the Bay Area Digitalists exhibition becomes a parallel to the works emblematic of our times.
Dorothy R. Santos November 2015
Dorothy R. Santos is a writer, editor, and curator whose research areas and interests include new media and digital art, programming, the internet, augmented reality, online performance, gaming, open source culture, and political aesthetics. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, she holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco, and received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. Her master’s thesis Narratives of Marginalized Bodies: Exploring Third Space in Contemporary New Media and Digital Art (2014) focused on new media and digital artists who interrogate the body as the site of interaction in relationship to architecture, augmented and virtual spaces. Through her investigation of the body’s mediation through haptic technologies and gamification, she argued that the unorthodox applications of mass media technologies reveal critical narratives of obscured and marginalized people. She serves as interim managing editor for Hyphen, contributing editor for new asterisk magazine, and is a member of the research collective The Civic Beat. Her work appears in art21, Art Practical, Daily Serving, Hyperallergic, and Public Art Dialogue. She has lectured and spoken at the de Young museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, School of Visual Arts, and San Francisco Art Institute. She serves as executive staff for the Bay Area Society for Art & Activism and a board member for the SOMArts Cultural Center.
Benjamin De Kosnik is an artist working with hybrid media in multiple disciplines: one to three channel video art, animated GIF, new media, installations, experimental writing and publishing, documentation systems, legal instruments, horticulture, and works on paper. He has participated in juried group shows in Tokyo, Hong Kong, California, and Texas. He was formerly a Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat specializing in developer tools, libraries, and runtimes. He is a member of the GNU project, and has served as a technical expert for the International Standards Organization working groups on the C and C++ languages, The Austin Group, and Linux Standard Base. He incorporates this technical background and his free software aesthetic of computation into his art experiments. His current interests are visual forms of metadata augmentation for computer vision, media remix and fan production, horticulture, and mapping global media piracy flows. He currently lives and works as an artist and engineer in San Francisco, California.
Pirate Maps and Papers, 2011, 2013 Inkjet, magnifying glass, metal hook 26 x 57 x 1 in.
Benjamin De Kosnik creates custom software, hardware, and networked tools that generate visual artifacts and occasionally incorporate the code itself. These artifacts include one to three channel video art, animated GIF, electronic media installations,
Equal Weight Uhuras, 2014-2015 6 channel video 08:00:00 loop
publishing, documentation systems, legal systems, horticulture, and works on paper.
Scott Kildall is a new media artist who writes algorithms that transform various datasets into 3D sculptures and installations. He also creates networked performance “bots�, which often invite public participation through direct interaction. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the New York Hall of Science, Transmediale, the Venice Biennale, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the San Jose Museum of Art. He has received fellowships, awards and residencies from organizations including Impakt Works, Autodesk, Recology San Francisco, Turbulence.org, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, Kala Art Institute and The Banff Centre for the Arts. Scott received an M.F.A. (2006) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from the Art & Technology Studies Department and a B.A. from Brown University in Political Philosophy. He resides in San Francisco and works part-time at the Exploratorium as a New Media Exhibit Developer for Life Sciences.
Installation from Art Rap EP series at Root Division, November 2015
Data Crystals: Construction Permits 2014 3D printed sculpture 6 x 7 in.
Data Crystals: Crime Incidents 2014 3D printed sculpture 7 x 8 in. Data Crystals are a series of 3D-printed sculptures, which I generate algorithmically from open data sources.
Chess with Mustaches 2015 Glass and printed letters 12 x 3 in. (sculpture) 4 x 3 ft. (installation)
Chess with Mustaches is a set of six mustachioed 3D-printed chess pieces, created in response to a legal threat from the Duchamp Estate. In collaboration with Bryan Cera
Twitter feed from EquityBot 2014 Interactive installation 6 x 6 x 3 ft.
EquityBot is an automated stock-trading algorithm that uses emotions on Twitter as the basis for investments in a simulated bank account. With support from the Impakt Works Residency
Laura Hyunjhee Kim is a Korean-American new media artist who primarily works with video, performance and the Internet as a creative medium and site for exploration. Kim’s recent work explores how digital-technology reconfigures everyday life creates new daily rituals, and influences behavior. Kim was the recipient of the 2013 ArtSlant Award in New Media, 2010 Sally Owen Marshall Best in Show Award and has recently shown works in numerous on/offline exhibition spaces including CAAMFest, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA),SOMArts (San Francisco, CA), Bronx Art Space (Bronx, NY), Fountain Art Fair-New York (New York, NY), Fei Contemporary Art Center-Shanghai (Shanghai, China), “#nfcdab Wrocław” Digital Art Biennial (Wrocław, Poland), The Berlin International Directors Lounge–Berlin (Berlin, Germany), Mutuo Centro de Arte (Barcelona, Spain), Costa Rica Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (San José, Costa Rica), quARTel - Galeria Municipal de Arte (Abrantes, Portugal), Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art-Caracas (Caracas, Venezuela), Super Art Modern Museum, The Wrong-New Digital Art Biennale. Born and raised in Stanford, California, Kim moved to Seoul, South Korea, at the age of nine. She received her B.S. in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009 and M.F.A. from the New Genres Department, San Francisco Art Institute in 2012. Kim currently resides and works in San Francisco, California.
Privacy Stock Video Footage 2015 Video 00:24
This video is a basic privacy stock video footage that can be used for all types of online Terms of Services.
User Laura 2015 Video 00:50
As time spent online (as an active loggedin community member) grows, the library of usernames and passwords increase as well — this often generates chaotic situations filtering through memory lane in order to retain the matching combination of codes to access a personal online identity.
You Look Beautiful Today 2015 Video 00:20
You are what you watch online: the piece was inspired by catered pop-up ads on YouTube videos that reflect a user’s digital fingerprint and relationship with the video content.
Moving to the Clouds 2014 Video 01:50
A juvenile word-play with the phrase “hey- i’ll upload it to the cloud,” the video realizes a contemporary obsession with storing data and retaining memory through (the seemingly everexpandable) cloud computing services.
Sharing is Caring 2012 Video 02:33
Referring to the anonymous communities built through social media networks (such as Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter), the piece remixes found-gifs highlighting the circulation of individual stories and questioning the relationships within the digital net space.
Kadet Kuhne is a visual and sound artist who generates synthetic stimuli as an investigation of subjectivity through systems of control and technological mediation. With a preoccupation of what constitutes consciousness, Kadet aims to prompt visceral responses to the invisible forces of particles and vibration that constitute all matter. Taking form in video, installation, performance, interactivity, album releases, 3D printing and 2D print, Kadet’s works have been presented nationally and internationally at select venues such as the Museum of Art Lucerne, Contemporary Art Center Villa Arson, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, LACE Gallery, Antimatter Film Festival, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Crossroads Film Festival, and Krowswork. Kadet spent her formative years in both Los Angeles and Minneapolis. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota, she immediately relocated back to California in San Francisco. After the dot-com bust in 2000, Kadet moved to Los Angeles where she received a master’s degree in Integrated Media and Music Composition from the California Institute of the Arts. Currently based in Oakland, Kadet works as an Adjunct Professor in Media Arts alongside owning a postproduction sound studio, Audible Shift.
Sedimentary Noise 2015 Video, sound 00:31:00
Sedimentary Noise mines the strata of technological, political and social interactions, and investigates how these layers construct personal agency and complicity. What do we consciously and unconsciously choose to participate in, resist against, manufacture, and imagine for our selves and others?
Rebound 2012 Video, Sound 00:10:00
Harnessed by blinders, the figure endures repetitive falls as if being sideswiped by invisible forces. Rebound’s boundless white space represents the consciousness of the mind, fluctuating between lethargy, confusion, and the will for progressive change.
Rebound: Invisible Force (top) 2014 3D print, light box 8 x 13 x 2 in.
Rebound: Blinders (bottom) 2014 3D print, light box 8 x 13 x 2 in. 3D print lithophane of a still image from Kadet’s video Rebound, in which an androgynous figure continuously rebounds on a journey of becoming, despite abrupt displacements and repetitive falls.
Interference: Dependent Origination 2014 3D print 6.5 x 11 x 1.5 in.
The waveform of the spoken words Dependent Origination is traced and then phase shifted, or inverted, to create cancellation, rendering the perceived sound silent. This cancellation brings into consideration the subjective nature of thought and the solidity of language.
Drone Tower 2015 3D print 6 x 6 x 6 in.
Based on cymatics – the visible effects of sound and vibration – Drone Tower is derived from the pattern of a processed noise drone.
Al Grumet is a self-taught visual artist. He grew up in Queens, New York. From 1996 through 2010, Al lived in New York City and pursued careers in law and financial services. In 2010, Al moved with his family to Mill Valley, CA where he now lives and works as an artist. In March 2014, Al’s work was featured at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, in an exhibition entitled Emerging Artists of the Bay Area. The exhibition was curated by Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle and featured the work of five Bay Area artists. Al is a Board Member and Director of Online Programming at Art Works for Change, an Oaklandbased arts organization. Art Works for Change creates contemporary art exhibitions that address social and environmental issues. Al recently launched a new online platform for the organization and co-curated the inaugural exhibition, which launched in August 2015.
The High Priestess, (detail) 2013 UV cured ink on aluminum, powder coated steel, oil on canvas filled with gravel 24 x 20 in. (print), 14 x 11 x 10 in. (sculpture)
Sumi, (left) 2013-2014 UV cured ink on aluminum, mixed media installation including powder coated steel,archival inkjet on plastic mesh and photopaper, vinyl, plastic bottle, sumi ink 2D diptych, each panel 30 x 47.5 in. (each panel) Installation Dimensions variable.
Images from the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco and the internet are layered into a story about appropriation and the infringement of the rights of the underrepresented.
The High Priestess, (center) 2013 UV cured ink on aluminum, powder coated steel, oil on canvas filled with gravel 24 x 20 in. (print), 14 x 11 x 10 in. (sculpture)
Mine 2013 UV cured ink on aluminum, mixed media installation including oil on canvas filled with gravel, powder coated steel, found objects, acrylic jars, photo book 28 x 66 in. (print) Installation dimensions variable Images from the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco are used to tell a story of lost youth, addiction and the search for our inner voice.
Tim Roseborough is a digital artist whose work explores the notions of play and games. Roseborough’s artwork and exhibitions have been included in publications, including Artforum, Art In America, Art News, Hyperallergic.com, The SF Chronicle, The SF Examiner and The SF Bay Guardian. Mr. Roseborough was chosen as the inaugural artist in the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Emerging Artist exhibition series. He has performed and shown artwork at the 2012 and 2010 ZERO1 New Media Biennials, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Pro Arts, Somarts Cultural Center, Root Division, and Catharine Clark Galleries in San Francisco, CA. Roseborough has been awarded residencies at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Mr. Roseborough lives and works in San Francisco, after moving to the Bay area in 2001.
7 Words On A Television 2015 Single-channel digital video, color 00:10:03
Inspired by the Op-Art of the 1960s, and in line with his continuing interest in games and puzzles, 7 Words On A Television features a video monitor mounted at a forty-five degree angle. A digitally generated pattern of perpendicular lines forms cryptic messages embedded within in its networks. The messages slowly reveal themselves to the perceptive viewer.
Minimalism One Black 2012 Archival inkjet print 24 x 18 in.
Let me come to your opening 2012 Archival inkjet print 24 x 18 in.
The Art Rap EP, (Lyrics) 2012 Preparation for sound recordings on compact disc, paper Minimalism, 00:03:39
The Art Rap EP series is a multimedia project incorporating music video, a Web site, compact discs and archival inkjet prints. Roseborough adopts the alter ego, D. Skilling, producing an extended play recording of four Pop and Hip-Hop inspired songs about contemporary art and its concerns. Lyrics from the songs are then translated into Roseborough’s Englyph writing system to yield the unique archival prints. (see dskilling.com/ artrapep)
Contenda & Contenda Pop-Quiz 2013 Single channel video, JPG, paper Roseborough transforms the history of art into a set of trivia questions and visual clues which challenge the participants’ knowledge of important art movements and artists.
Enduring Protest Banners We Shall Overcome (left) 2015 Vinyl banner 5 x 4 ft. Don’t Shoot Our Kids (right) 2015 Vinyl banner 5 x 4 ft.
Roseborough engages the history of social protest in the city of Berkeley, California in the “Enduring Protest” series, which features large-scale digitally printed vinyl banners and a Web site. In conjunction with the Berkeley Historical Society, Roseborough culled slogans used in archival photographs of protests in Berkeley and translated them into his Englyph writing system, rendering the translations on large scale vinyl banners.
smith|allen is an interdisciplinary art and design duo, bringing together an architectural designer with a sculpture and installation artist. Merging architecture, art, and product, the work is an ongoing exploration of art and design through the lens of digital craftsmanship. The duo has shown at Interface Gallery in Oakland, ASC Projects in San Francisco, and Autodesk in San Francisco, among other venues. smith|allen has been featured in Architect Magazine, Hi-Fructose Magazine, Forbes, and Deezeen, and more. The duo’s work is permanently installed at the Facebook campus in Menlo Park and at the Project 387 Residency in Mendocino. They have lived and worked in the Bay Area since 2008. Interfacing digital and analog materials and fabrication techniques, Agmen is a form driven essay in structure and material, exploring a future with properties of built objects and environment in flux. Agmen (process) captures the iterative design and creative process—visitors are invited to take screenprinted cards home with the open source code for the 3D printed components. Lattice 6.4 is an exploration into structure, tessellation, and three-dimensional patterning.
Lattice 6.4 2014 3D printed Bioplastic 12 x 10 x 3 in.
Agmen 2015 3D printed Bioplastic, wood, acrylic, gesso, epoxy, bondo 59 x 149 x 191 in.
Bay Area Digitalists at Root Division Exhibition Checklist
Benjamin De Kosnik Equal Weight Uhuras, 2014-2015 6 channel video 08:00:00 loop Pirate Maps and Papers, 2011, 2013 Inkjet, magnifying glass, metal hook 26 x 57 x 1 in. Al Grumet Mine, 2013 UV cured ink on aluminum, powder coated steel, oil on canvas filled with gravel, found objects in acrylic jars, photo book, keyrings, archival inkjet on paper and acrylic 28 x 66 in., 54 x 32 x 32 in. (Dimensions variable) Sumi, 2103-2014 UV cured ink on aluminum, powder coated steel, archival inkjet on plastic mesh, archival inkjet on paper, vinyl, plastic bottle, paint rag, sumi ink 30 x 47.5 in. (each) 17 x 28 x 10 in. (Dimensions variable) The High Priestess, 2013 UV cured ink on aluminum, powder coated steel, oil on canvas filled with gravel 24 x 20 in., 14 x 11 x 10 in. (Dimensions variable) Scott Kildall Chess with Mustaches, 2015 Glass 12 x 3 in. In collaboration with Bryan Cera Data Crystals: Construction Permits, 2014 3D print 6 x 7 in. Data Crystals: Crime Incidents, 2014 3D print 7 x 8 in. Data Crystals: San Francisco Civic Art Collection, 2014 3D print 7 x 9 in. EquityBot, 2014 Multimedia installation 72 x 72 x 36 in. Courtesy of Impakt Works Residency Laura Hyunjhee Kim Moving to the Clouds, 2014 Video 00:01:50 Privacy Stock Video Footage, 2015 Video 00:00:24
Sharing is Caring, 2012 Video 00:02:33 User Laura, 2015 Video 00:00:50 Kadet Kuhne Drone Tower, 2015 3D print 6 x 6 x 6 in. Interference: Dependent Origination, 2014 3D print 6.5 x 11 x 1.5 in. Interference: Overlap, 2014 3D print, light box 12 x 12 x 2 in. Rebound, 2012 Video, sound 00:10:00 Rebound: Blinders, 2014 3D print, light box 8 x 13 x 2 in. Rebound: Invisible Force, 2014 3D print, light box 8 x 13 x 2 in. Sedimentary Noise, 2015 Video, sound, sensors 00:31:00 Tim Roseborough Contenda Pop Quiz, 2013 JPG presentation slides, paper 11 x 8.5 in. Courtesy of A Simple Collective Don’t Shoot Our Kids, 2015 Printed vinyl banner 60 x 48 in. Courtesy of A Simple Collective Let Me Come To Your Opening One White, 2012 Archival inkjet print 24 x 18 in. Courtesy of A Simple Collective $500 (Edition of 5) Minimalism One Black, 2012 Archival inkjet print 24 x 18 in. Courtesy of A Simple Collective Seven Words On A Television, 2015 Single channel video 00:10:03 Courtesy of A Simple Collective
We Shall Overcome, 2015 Printed vinyl banner 60 x 48 in. Courtesy of A Simple Collective
smith|allen Agmen, 2015 3D printed Bioplastic, wood, acrylic, gesso, epoxy, bondo 59 x 149 x 191 in. Agmen (process), 2015 Digital sketch, ink, transparency 19 x 24 in. Lattice 6.4, 2014 3D printed Bioplastic 12 x 10 x 3 in.
Bay Area Digitalists Curated by: Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen November 4 – December 5, 2015
Free public events presented at Root Division: 11/14 Second Saturday Exhibition Reception: Saturday, November 14th, 7-10 pm Also featuring Creative Station, free all-ages art activities in the Classroom inspired by the exhibited work of Smith|Allen.
11/16 A Seat at the Table: Participatory Artists’ Panel: Monday, November 16th 6-9 pm
Exhibiting Artists: Benjamin De Kosnik, Scott Kildall, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Kadet Kuhne, Al Grumet, Tim Roseborough, Smith|Allen (Stephanie Smith & Bryan Allen).
This exhibition is supplemented with a print catalogue designed by Pirate Satellite and an ongoing digital database with additional content (bayareadigitalists.com).
Members of the Bay Area Digitalist movement’s “B.A.D.Minds” group expand their salon and open the table to discuss art and technology with special guests and members of the community.
Root Division, 1131 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103 Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 2-6 pm (or by appointment)
Root Division is a visual art non-profit in San Francisco that connects creativity and community through a dynamic ecosystem of arts education, exhibitions, and studios. Root Division’s mission is to empower artists, foster community service, inspire youth, and enrich the Bay Area through engagement in the visual arts. The organization is a launching pad for artists, a stepping-stone for educators and students, and a bridge for the general public to become art supporters. Root Division is supported in part by a plethora of individual donors and by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, National Endowment for the Arts/ ArtWorks, San Francisco Arts Commission: Community Investments, Grants for the Arts: San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Crescent Porter Hale Foundation, Bothin Foundation, Drusie Davis Family Fund, Adobe Foundation, Wallis Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Bialkin Family Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, Salomon Family Foundation, Morton Foundation, Garver Family Foundation, A Better Place Foundation, and Art4Moore.
Root Division Staff: Michelle Mansour Executive Director Amy Cancelmo Art Programs Director Leticia Salinas Education Programs Director Brooke Westfall Communications & Development Manager Blake Gibson Installations & Facilities Manager Susa Cortez Outreach & Programs Assistant Catalogue Design: Pirate Satellite Installation Photos: Mido Lee Productions
1131 Mission Street, SF, CA 94103 rootdivision.org / 415.863.7668
rootdivision.org