Our guests for the program were Chelsea Thompto, KT Duffy, Sue Huang and Rashin Fahandej. A fifth artist, SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY wasn’t available for the live recording but she is individually interviewed in episode 16, and each of the other artists were also individually interviewed so be sure to check those episodes out as well.
This season we’ve partnered with the New Media Caucus, an international non-profit formed to promote the development and understanding of new media art. This season of the podcast is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts grants for arts projects.
This special live recording was held in February 2023 on location at Flux Factory in Queens, New York City.
image description: Chelsea is smiling radiantly at the camera, with golden hair, in a dithered color image.
image description: KT wears a white hoodie, looking to the left, in clear glasses with lip piercing and earrings and close cropped hair.
image description: Sue looking into the camera, wearing an apron. She is standing in the street in front of a brick wall and construction.
image description: Rashin standing with crossed arms in dappled light in front of a wall of portraits of fathers.
Chelsea Thompto is a transdisciplinary artist and educator working at the intersections of art, trans studies, and technology. Her research based studio practice spans a variety of media which often include code, video, sound, writing, and sculpture and her work has been shown nationally and internationally. Born and raised in Iowa, she has spent most of her life between the Midwest and California and she’s an incoming Assistant Professor of Creative Technologies at Virginia Tech. She is currently a member of the Year 9 NEW INC cohort in the Art & Code track, and serves on the editorial board of the Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus. She received an MFA in 4D Art and an MA in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
KT Duffy is a new media artist from Chicago’s southwest side and is currently an Assistant Professor in Art, Technology, and Culture at the University of Oklahoma. They received their MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. They live between Chicago, IL, and Norman, OK, with their partners and dogs.
Duffy conjures entities into existence via code-based processes and digital fabrication. As a Neurodivergent-NonBinary person, the normative modalities of learning and making were not designed for them. To move through these structures, they made their own systems, glitching and patching and breaking the entanglements of binary logic. Their work manifests infinite possibility, translating the immeasurable interconnection of transcendent sentience, and examining the impending demise of binary systems.
Sue Huang is a new media and installation artist whose work addresses collective experience. Her current projects explore ecological intimacies, human and nonhuman relations, and speculative futures. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati; Rhizome; ISEA; Ars Electronica; and the Beall Center for Art + Technology. She’s been artist in residence at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), the Studios at MASS MoCA , and at Cherry Street Pier.
Rashin Fahandej is an Iranian-American futurist, immersive storyteller, and cultural activist. Fahandej’s artistic initiatives are multiyear experimental laboratories for collective radical reimaginations of social systems, using counter-narratives of care and community co-creation to design equitable futures. Her projects center on marginalized voices and the role of media, technology, and public collaboration in generating emotional connections to drive social change.
This season of the podcast is produced with the New Media Caucus for New Rules: Conversations with New Media Artists. You can find out more by visiting www.newmediacaucus.org. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
Special thanks to Jessye McDowell, Rebecca Forstater and Nat Roe.
Our audio production is by Max Ludlow.
Our music on today’s episode is High water by Artem Bemba, 20 by Lucky Dragons and Ambient Fight by Kirk Osamayo, from the Free Music archive.
This episode is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Lee Tusman
You’re listening to a special live recording of the podcast Artists and
Hackers, a podcast on art, code and community.
We talk to programmers, artists, educators and designers in an effort to critically look at online art making and the history of technology and the internet. We’re interested in where we’ve been and speculative ideas on the future. I’m Lee Tusman.
This season we’ve partnered with the New Media Caucus, an international non-profit formed to promote the development and understanding of new media art.
On today’s episode, I’m speaking with four new media artists selected by the New Media Caucus for New Rules: Conversations with New Media Artists. This event and this season of the podcast is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Arts Projects.
Our guests for the program were Chelsea Thompto, KT Duffy, Sue Huang and Rashin Fahandej. A fifth artist, SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY wasn’t available for the live recording but she is individually interviewed in episode 16, and each of the other artists were also individually interviewed so be sure to check those episodes out as well.
This special live recording was held in February 2023 on location at Flux Factory in Queens, New York City.
Lee Tusman
Just to kick things off, and to get started a little bit. I was hoping
that the artists could say a little bit about their background. And for
each of you, how did you get involved? How did you get into making new
media art?
Sue, maybe we’ll start with you.
Well, thank you so much, Lee. My name is Sue Huang, pronouns she and they. I teach at the University of Connecticut, and I am a new media artist. I went to UCLA for grad school, same school as Lee, and I previous to that had studied at an art and technology program in Sweden. And then even prior to that, I had been studying science and technology policy at Georgetown. So when I think about kind of like the patterns of interest that I had, when I was getting into this work, I think I was always really interested in the future. And I was always really interested in thinking about what was to come. So I was always really interested in thinking about how internet, the internet and different technologies were being used by people in society, by activists. And then later, I was interested in making those tools myself.
Lee
So Sue, did you come from a background where you’ve been doing
photography or painting or some other media? Or did you… how did you
start working in new media? How did you get there?
Sue Huang
So actually, I mean, I started from international affairs, actually. So
Science Technology Policy for international affairs. So I was thinking
about how-
Lee Tusman
You made the natural transition from from that to new media art!
Sue Huang
Yeah! I was writing and thinking and researching about how activists
were using the internet. This is back in like 1997, 1998, how they were
using the internet to transform society, how they’re using it to act
against governments, and and non-governmental agencies. So that was
actually where I first learned about programming. And so when I learned
about programming, first, I’ll admit, I was very confused. And I was not
really sure about what to do with it. It was later when I went on to
study art at this art and technology program that it finally kind of
clicked into place. And I was like, okay, all right. Now I understand
about computers and about programming. And I’ll say I got hooked. Yeah,
I got hooked, and that happens. You can get hooked on programming, and
that kind of set me off on the journey that I’ve continued on.
Lee Tusman
Okay, so this is good. So you got hooked on programming. This happened
to me as well. And so this makes me want to speak a little bit to
Chelsea. Since code has been such a big part of your practice. Can you
say a little bit about how you came to become a new media artist, what
your background was and what led you there?
Chelsea Thompto
Yeah. So I actually started out as a sculptor in my undergraduate and
sculpture also, in the first bit of graduate school that I did. And I
kind of feel like my whole existence as an artist has been having
technical skills that I consider not art skills, and then slowly over
time, realizing that they are in fact art skills and bringing them in,
because I’ve been interested in computers. I built computers with
friends in high school, and really, you know, have been interested in
like the technical side of it for far longer than I have really
understood it as part of my art practice. And I didn’t really make my
first piece that I would consider like a quote unquote new media art
piece until probably 2015 or 2016, in grad school.
Lee
Okay, so this is interesting. So, you know, a large part of your work is
the code behind it as well. Can you say what led to that becoming part
of your practice?
Chelsea
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s one of the things that drew me to it. I
think the two things really for me with code is one, that I realized
that the way that I was thinking I could model that in code, or that
code was a good way of finding metaphor and analogy with the way I was
thinking. And then the other part of it is that I really love to be able
to share process with people. And there’s, you know, you could do that,
of course, when you’re thinking about sculptural processes or studio
processes. But the thing I love about code is how open it can be if you
choose to make it that way. And so as I started working with code, my
thought was, even if this stuff is not, you know, exactly the most
refined or beautiful or impressive code, that there was something added
to the conversation by having it be open. And so for me, it really
becomes about the conversation I’m having with different layers of
audience, the audience who’s only going to see the visual work, the
audience who is maybe going to dabble in the back end, and then the
audience who might go to a GitHub repo before they even look at the
visual, and I’m kind of interested in how to make things that are
interesting for all those groups.
Lee
Okay, so we’re talking about public, we’re talking about audience, then
we’re talking about GitHub, you know, which is where…we’re some nerds
here but just to kind of spell it out, GitHub is an online space. It’s
the largest space in the world, I think, for people to share code
publicly, to work publicly on software projects, which could be I don’t
know, database or banking software, or it could be an art project or, or
anything in between. One of the things I’ve been interested in is
thinking about what are our publics? Who are our publics when we’re
showing our work? One is an art space. One might be a code repository.
So I wanted to ask KT how you got into making new media art and then
also a little about the spaces that you choose to show that work in,
like the form of your work creating a mini golf course, for example, for
one of your pieces, or one of your projects? What are the right avenues
for presenting that work?
KT Duffy
I think I kind of wanted to prove that I could do it. So I studied
design and social work. And it turns out, I was just interested in the
content of the social work degree and not the practice of social work.
We can talk about that. I can talk about that all day long. But maybe
I’ll breeze over that for now. And so I was really interested in design.
And then I got really invested in video. And then from video, I made the
jump to interactivity. So I taught myself how to code while I was
bartending after undergrad, and then continued that in grad school. And
then I also worked in a tech startup, I’m a recovering tech worker. So
that gave me a lot of experience in UX-UI and front end development, and
I was just really interested in how I could, like, f that up a little
more. It’s like really prescribed and formulaic, and very frictionless
experience. And I was just like, Well, what about a little friction?
What happens when you kind of f up this path that you know is perfectly
planned for us? So that’s kind of how I got into it. And then the Mini
Golf was actually a show at the Elmhurst Museum of Art. They were asking
for proposals. It was a redo of a show from the 70s at the Art Institute
called Par Excellence Redux. And it was put on by Colossal in Chicago.
And so I submitted a proposal to explore this medieval meme I’m sort of
obsessed with in Ireland called the Sheela Na Gig. Anyone knows what
that is? It’s like a gargoyle thing that’s holding its own Vulva open.
It’s pretty incredible.
Lee
And this is like a proto-meme?
KT
Yeah, it’s like a Stone Age, well not Stone Age, but it’s carved in
stone. So that’s the time we’re talking about. And no one exactly knows
what it’s about. And people have claimed it for all different reasons.
And you find it in the openings over archways and doors, but you also
find it in the cornerstone of churches. So scholars think that it was
maybe some kind of fertility symbol or maybe at some time was demonized,
and was a symbol of, I don’t know, femme lust or something bad like
that? I’m just obsessed with it. And I just thought it would be really
interesting to explore that in the mini golf universe. So I made this
idol. And I kind of just let it be. I just wanted to be all those things
like exist on all those planes. And I just also really love the idea of
creating this queer vagina monster idol for families to play with that
stuff. And talking about that stuff with kids is really important. So I
just wanted it to be this kind of celebration of this thing I’m obsessed
with. And it was really fun to make. And I’m working on a big VR project
that I hope to work on for the next two years about the Sheela Na Gig,
which is exciting. So I keep returning to that as a subject matter.
Lee Tusman
When I look at your work there’s a lot of joy that I find in the pieces
which I think is for whatever reason harder to find when I’m looking at
art in galleries and museums and things like that. And I think that
really stuck out when I’m checking out your pieces.
One of the things that’s kind of a universal when we’re looking at creating art… all of us, everyone of you are artists, new media artists. You’re creating work and thinking about who that audience is and what you’re trying to show or demonstrate. I’m curious Rashin to hear a little bit from you not only your background as a new media artist, how you got into making new media artwork, but how does working in public shape your work?
Rashin Fahandej
Thank you. Hi, everyone. So coming to new media art or emerging
technology and art my background is also in fine art and painting and
sculpture. So definitely that sort of poetry and tactility of that space
is something that I would like to translate to emerging media. But one
of the main reasons that I find emerging media and immersive
storytelling compelling is an aspect that it’s a space that it’s
innately exploratory so it allows for experimentation. And I do use the
emerging media and technology as a way to connect with the community and
work with the community and sort of process this space of trauma and be
speculative and think about future, that it could be different. So I
find a great power in that sort of novelty of those tools. And sharing
those spaces and using that basically the tools to create these
alternative spaces to bring community members together with the artists
or community members from different perspective to then work together to
imagine spaces. So definitely my work, my practice, is community engaged
in the process and that’s 80% at least of my time that I invest in that
work. And also like another aspect of the media is this form of
transcendence. There is a possibility to transcend beyond the space of
trauma using that speculative space.
Lee Tusman
Can you say a little bit how some of this plays out in a specific work?
I’m really curious if you could describe your piece A Father’s Lullaby,
what it entails, how it works? Particularly you use the language when I
was reading about it of disrupting the traditional power dynamics in
media and tech.
Rashin Fahandej
So one of the main questions that I have for me, art is a tool. I grew
up in Iran, with experiences that comes with that. And I grew up as a
woman, and as a minority, a persecuted minority. So definitely, I use
art as a tool of communication and thinking about cultural shifts. The
power that the media and technology and the storytelling, personal
stories have in creating a cultural impact. And with The Father’s
Lullaby one of the things that I’ve been sort of exploring is the
possibility of ecosystem, like how can we create when we think about
social justice issues, they are complex, they are intersectional, they
are multi-dimensional, and they are really hard to engage with them. And
I’m really interested in that web, and creating, again, like alternative
communities. And when I’m thinking about social change, I feel there is
a need to change our processes of doing things because a lot of time our
processes are actually perpetuating the same structural or social
dynamics that we try to critique. So the community co-creation, really
shifting the power dynamic and allowing the community to bring their
expertise, their lived experiences as expertise into the space and be
able to hold on to the tool. So the 360 camera, to the VR, to the
tilt-brush and paint with their children in this space and really use
the tools to kind of process the space of trauma, a form of healing and
connection. But also think about how it could be different.
Lee Tusman
It’s taking into your own hands, being able to shape things, as opposed
to something being done to you. It’s you doing something?
Rashin Fahandej
Absolutely, yeah. So absolutely, I think that sort of power and shifting
that power dynamic is important, but also, in terms of the technology in
the tech field is also important, because it’s also breaking the wall
between who we consider those who will be allowed to play and work with
the technology.
Lee Tusman
Right. Chelsea, I’m curious if that’s part of your work as well, you
know, in some of your pieces, you’re kind of confronting different, I
think you’ve used the language and correct me if I’m wrong, different
forms of violence that you’re confronting or counteracting with that.
I’m kind of curious to hear a little bit more about that, and how you
see that play a part of the projects that you’re creating?
Chelsea Thompto
Yeah, this really started for me with a project that I did, where I was
looking at the Mississippi River. And I was looking at this question
that I had, about who made the decision to take the Mississippi River
and make it basically a highway for capitalism, and to really make the
river a cyborg by putting all these dams and that led me down this path
to start thinking about the ways that technology has played a role in
fixing bodies, and making them producers of knowledge of product. And
then you know, as a trans person, I often find that the technologies
that are used to fix and stabilize or make bodies productive are really
ill fit for me. And so, you know, I would say probably my most recent
project that discusses this is Landmarks, which is a project that looks
at facial recognition, which is really quite bad at understanding faces
that do not fall within really white western ideas of what gender may or
may not look like. And the idea behind this project is to really kind of
lean into this idea of the default. Because I think that there’s a lot
of violence that is inherent in defaults in the ways that we think about
categories as inherent or natural. And that those things get reproduced
really, really fast, actually, with technology, because you think about
the way that you go through your life, and you maybe meet a new person,
and you have a sense of what their gender might be. But then maybe you
ask them their pronouns. And that’s a very slow social process. But
something like facial recognition and machine learning, that’s taking
that process, and it’s making that decision super fast. And so one of
the things I like to think about in my work is how can we slow down that
super fast process and really think about all the things that it’s
taking for granted. And so for me, part of engaging with the code is
really about problematizing it and thinking about ways to set up space
for folks to be able to actually explore it. One of the other things
about the work is that I’m really cautious of reproducing that violence.
And so, in the work, I try to think about the ways that harm might be
reproduced by the project, and what are the ways that I might be able to
limit or circumvent that?
Lee Tusman
What are some of the examples? I’m really curious?
Chelsea Thompto
For the Landmarks project with facial recognition, you know, I was
shopping around for what actual technology am I going to use? What
library am I going to use? And I ended up choosing a facial recognition
library that’s powered by JavaScript, in part because I was able to take
the weights, the actual data that they use to make those decisions. And
I was able to make an archive of that, and have it run off of past data
so that any viewer that came in and looked at that work or looks at the
website, if you go to it today, it’s still the same exact way. You can
look at that work, you can engage with that work, either by having live
facial recognition happen to you or by looking at a pre-recorded video,
but the data is not improved at all? So it’s not actually saving any
data, it’s not sending any of that back to make a model better or
anything like that. So that really informed you know, the the back end
and really changed pretty dramatically like how the actual coding
happened? Because it meant okay, now this is what I have to learn
within. And this is kind of the limits that I’m working with but for me,
that ethic is like really what allows me to be able to put something out
like that out into the world and know that I’m not like just blindly
reproducing what could be a really harmful product.
Lee Tusman
Pushing at those boundaries, seeing them dissolve makes me think a
little bit of love too. Maybe this is fitting because it was recently
Valentine’s Day. But I’m thinking specifically a little bit, KT, of your
work. I’m thinking of your piece ‘I want to watch you watch it burn?’ Am
I saying that right? ‘I want to watch you watch it burn.’ You wrote
about it that it’s a statement of love, and of solidarity. I guess I’m
curious, how does love play a part of of your work in general, or
specifically in that piece?
KT Duffy
I think like in general: So I’m white. And I know a lot of white people.
And there’s this idea of the work of whiteness, like what is our work in
thinking about racial justice and social justice in general. And also
something about me is that I come from cop culture in Chicago. My dad
was a cop in Chicago. So this is the community that I was raised in. And
for a really long time I sort of distanced myself from that community,
but like, through being an adult, and reading a lot of bell hooks, and
just having a lot of life experiences I just realized that the only way
to do this work is with love. And not cute, cuddly love, though that
plays a role, I guess. But really kind of like a hard line love that
holds people accountable and meets people where they’re at, continually
shows up. So that’s how I think about the practice of love, and my sort
of general practice as an artist, educator, person that is learning
about abolition. And then sorry, you were asking about the one piece as
well?
Lee Tusman
I was, but I’m actually curious, as you’re just saying that, it also
makes me think about, you know, so you’re an educator, how does that
play a part in the education role? You just mentioned that. How might
that come across either in the classroom or in your pedagogical
approach? I’m curious.
KT Duffy
Yeah, well, right now I’m teaching at University of Oklahoma. Part of
that I was teaching in Chicago at Northeastern Illinois University,
which is like a really radical institution. And so having really
complicated conversations about race, class, and gender was really
welcome there. And the students really, really wanted to have those
conversations. But that’s not really the case where I’m at currently.
There are students that really crave that, but it’s not…I got a lot of
bad reviews my first semester. And I think, you know, these students are
not all of them, but like, a lot of them are really different from me.
They have really different values. They come from different places than
I do. And I think the same thing that I was saying before, like
approaching them with love and respect and with dignity. I feel like
that’s the only way to lead a conversation or facilitate a conversation
about really, really difficult topics that may not have any solutions.
And I realized through doing this the wrong way for much of my life that
you can’t make people feel like they’re stupid, even if what they say is
some nonsense. You have to really meet them where they’re at. And
there’s a good way to maybe encapsulate that is thinking about like
Claudia Rankine and how she supposes that it’s sort of, we as white
people, we have this inclination of like finding solidarities with BIPOC
communities, but who we should actually try to find solidarity with is
other white people, because that’s like our work in this larger context,
is trying to get my own people in line and just like show up for them,
even though it feels like sort of counterintuitive. And so that’s what I
tried to do in the classroom as well.
Lee Tusman
Anyone else want to speak to that and your teaching practice? Coming
from a place of love, and maybe confronting challenges or making an
impact that way?
Rashin Fahandej
Yeah, definitely. You know, finding all possibilities of culture shift
and I think as an educator we have, that’s why I think I am an educator
because I feel the possibility of engaging the next generations in all
of these critical questions. That is hard, and you get bad reviews. But
also, it’s really empowering. And I think it’s empowering for them too
because some of them might be the first time they engage with these
questions or with these encounters. I actually do teach a course that
brings directly, I tried to bring all these critical questions in every
course that I teach in some way and form I think. But I also teach a
course that directly engages with my research and my artistic practice,
as sort of methods that I can offer to the students. So I teach this
course, we are in the fifth semester, that brings formerly incarcerated
fathers and probation officers. So the fathers are on federal probation
and the officers are in the classroom for the entire semester. And they
work with the students. So I think creating that encounter, the
possibility of that sort of engagement is empowering for everybody. So
the idea is to disrupt, again, the power dynamic that exists even
temporal, right? But thinking about: is it possible to create a form of
memory, a form of presence that we would have not imagined before? This
sort of space, but extended space like durational space that we work
together, and we were working, through learning, but also telling the
stories and narratives. So it is around the father’s stories. It is
centered on love, the space of love and the role of the fathers as the
sort of nurturing character.
Lee Tusman
One of the things that’s challenging, so I’m just thinking of one thing:
So I’m a professor… when we’re designing our courses, we’re coming up
with our curriculum and our lesson plan. We come up with these learning
objectives. I’m sure many of you are familiar with this, right? These
learning objectives are what we’re trying to hit in the courses that we
teach. And we’re promising these certain skills we’re going to teach.
You’re going to learn to code in this class. And you’re going to be able
to analyze. You’re going to be able to critique. You’re going to make
these kinds of things. How do we balance that with these things? I want
to be able to learn to program or want to be able to get a job with this
skill, or, you know, I wanna be able to use Photoshop. Whatever these
things are, be able to use a game engine and make a video game. How do
we, I guess I’m curious how you all deal with this yourselves. When
you’re a professor, you’re an artist, you have these things that you’re
really passionate about that are important and how we want to, we got
into teaching because we want to make an impact in certain ways. How do
we balance that stuff with these other things of learning Boolean
variables, that delicate balance? Does that make sense? I’m curious how
people deal with that kind of thing?
Chelsea Thompto
Yeah, I’ll talk about that a little bit. So I think I’m kind of in what
I think of as kind of a curious spot, because I teach in the Bay Area,
you know, in Silicon Valley, as it were, but I teach at a public
institution that largely serves first gen and working class students,
and that’s the background I come from too and most of my students are,
you know, what is considered historically underserved by universities.
And so, you know, for me in the classroom, it’s an interesting space to
be like, here, we are learning about technology, yet, we’re sort of
barred from a lot of the wealth of Silicon Valley and and it’s actually
like really challenging for a lot of my students to even be present in
the classroom because of the you know, the financial context. And so for
me, when I’m thinking about the technical skills, I think of that is
also new. You have class, right? Like they’re thinking about jobs. But
one of the ways that I think about it when I’m talking to them is that
the thing that is hireable from quote, unquote, an art standpoint is
less that you know how to use the p tag and HTML, and more that you have
a sense of like, why you’re putting something between your p tags and
HTML. And this gets back to this kind of like idea of like a liberal
education. And what does it mean to create? I don’t actually love the
word citizen in this context. But maybe community members is a better
thing. How do you make a sensitive thinking community member and that is
actually, I think, I’m hopeful that that is actually going to be like a
more sought after skill and technology in the coming years, especially
with things like ChatGPT, and these other things that are like
automating a lot of these hard, quote, unquote, technical skills. I
think that there’s going to be a shift back towards the softer, more
artistic, more social ways. And in that way, I’m hopeful, at least the
artists can really lead that. And if artists are going to lead that it
needs to be artists that are not, you know, people that have had the
benefit of, you know, a familial lineage of education, or a familial
lineage of wealth. And so I try to promote to my students that actually
the fact that they they feel like they’re not welcome in tech, or that
they haven’t been allowed to work with tech is actually really radical
and wonderful and powerful for them, and all the more reason for them to
try to hang with it.
KT Duffy
Thank you, Chelsea, for that. I was just going to offer that my approach
to teaching technology, specifically code is to break shit with my
students. That’s how I learned how to code. Yeah, break shit. You know,
that’s how I learned how to deal with technology, because I’m a
neurodiverse person that the normal modes of education don’t work for
me. And I feel like, for me, in my classroom, when you approach
technology as something that is this overlord with control over our
lives, which it absolutely is, don’t get me wrong. But when you expose
it as a tool that is not as difficult to understand as perhaps Silicon
Valley would want us to believe. When you design projects to where the
students can just can rip shit apart and put it back together and
imagine new forms of technology and new ways of being in community with
technology, because it seems like maybe in Silicon Valley the community
builds itself around the tech, right? Like, the tech often comes first.
And then the community forms. I’m really interested in how do we lay the
groundwork for the community, and then bring the tech into the community
so that the community has self-governance and ownership over the
technology, because we’re sending these students out into the world and
out into the industry. And it’s trash out there, right? And I just let
them know that I’m here to equip y’all with the skills you need to
navigate this: how to take up space in that institution and how to use
your voice how to be an ally. Because I personally feel like that stuff
is far more important than the syntax. Because the syntax will come. You
will learn that. You’ll learn on the job, as long as you have a
familiarity with it.
Lee Tusman
Can I just say the one thing I think you’re also doing too, which is I
think you’re being very playful, right? It seems like both in your work,
and then also in how you teach too. If I’m getting that, right? Is that
some aspect of it? I mean I’m curious what amount of of play and you
know, if that registers with you, and if that’s some key to how you
work?
KT Duffy
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I learned how to do all this by just
messing around with it, and spitting something out from this program and
bringing it in this other program, going into the code and messing with
that, and then you know, spitting it out as audio or something like
that. So for me, play is a huge part of my practice. This idea of
serious play. I think I try to bring a lot of fun times into my
classroom too, because I’m also talking about critical technology
constantly. And the students in those conversations often feel really
defeated. Because that’s how this conversation goes. And we don’t really
have a solution to a lot of the problems that technology poses. And so
in order to create an environment where students can feel like they can
participate in making change or envision change for the future, I feel
like bringing in play is a really important role to allow the students
to have hands-on experience with what future-making looks like. Whether
it’s using a weirdo API or having like Dalle interpret your dreams and
things like that. I’m probably rambling now.
Lee Tusman
I’m also curious for others too. Sue, what aspect does “play” play in
your work?
Sue Huang
Yeah, I mean, I think if I’m talking about my own work, or my students
work or my own work, either way, you know, the work’s got to be
interesting. I make work about ice cream and fungi and erotica because
those are things that are interesting. They’re interesting to me.
Lee Tusman
Say it again? Ice cream…
Sue Huang
Ice cream, fungi, clouds, and erotica. Yeah. I mean, those are things I
mean. We like to lay around, and we stare at clouds. People like to
write about clouds. And then I’m thinking about clouds. And I’m writing
about clouds. And then I’m baking clouds. And I made clouds for an
entire year. I made ceramic clouds. And then I made the cloud ice cream.
So, you know, that was great. Because I could totally get into that. I
like clouds. And I could spend an entire year just thinking about
clouds.
Lee Tusman
Amazing.
Sue Huang
Is it gonna be playful? Yes, I want it to be playful, because I’ve got
two kids, and they’ve got to enjoy that. I want that work to be
accessible on many, many different levels. Like, it’s got to be
accessible for all types of publics. The audience is really important in
my work. The audience experience is really, really important to me. So I
can talk about theoretical things about my work. And that’s really
enjoyable for me, but it’s not necessarily important to everybody in
that audience. So some people just want to go, they want to eat some
cloud ice cream, and that’s awesome, too. Yeah.
Lee Tusman
It works on multiple levels. Rashin, I’m curious, actually, in your
work: there’s a lot of narrative storytelling in your work. You’re
trying to confront imbalances, hierarchies, violence, political
structures. I’m curious, is there an element of play in the creation or
the experimentation or some aspect of that in your work too? Is that
something that is part of the work or not as much? Or are there other
motivators or other ways that you’re working?
Rashin Fahandej
Yeah, definitely, I think, depending on how you define play. Yeah, for
sure. So I think that sort of exploration and discovery is something
that is definitely pronounced, an important aspect of it. Then I think
that’s why it can be speculative because you allow failure. So when I
think about play, and when I think about exploration, I emphasize
there’s so much in all aspects of pedagogy in the process of working
with the people and community. And thinking about how there is a joy in
the sense of discovery. I think that that’s how I define play:
experimenting with tools and finding new ways to use that as
storytelling. And in my own work, I use a range of different mediums.
Past mediums of stop motion animation to volumetric filmmaking. And the
same with the pedagogy. I, just to go back to what you mentioned before,
it doesn’t need to be binary. It doesn’t need to be working with tech
and working with tech that has meaning. And I feel like it’s really
interesting to merge them together and break all of these forms of words
and definitions that I think they are part of the structure that we are
critiquing. So instead of spending all the time for students to do
projects to just learn the technology, they can do social impact work.
And in the process, they can learn what to do and how to do it. And the
same with the community members. So I think that sort of play comes to
practice because it allows that fear to break and have joy in doing
things and not working and and then eventually work together to make
meaning of the experiments. That is happening along the way.
KT Duffy
I just wanted to offer that play is also like a form of refusal, you
know, like using the thing wrong. Offering up a project that suggests
wrong usage for a weird outcome, I think is really important to give
students some autonomy with the technology that kind of controls their
life.
Lee Tusman
I like that. What’s maybe the largest, or some of the biggest challenges
you face as a new media artist?
KT Duffy
Currently? Trying to get ARcore to run on an Amazon tablet.
Lee Tusman
Say that one more time?
KT Duffy
Trying to get ARcore from Unity, which is a Google product, to run on a
Amazon tablet. Because my students have PCs with an iPhone and you can’t
build your AR app for your iPhone on a PC. And so we tried to use
tablets, and everyone was sad.
Lee Tusman
Yeah, I mean, isn’t that the biggest issue in new media? Maybe I’m
wrong, I was asking this in a different kind of way. But then I realized
maybe the most immediate problems are always tech related. Right? So why
do we work in this medium? Or why do we work with this technology?
Rashin Fahandej I think it’s actually it’s very hard to give people things that they know how to do, and then say, fail, and experiment and expand. So I think that’s actually the whole point for me and for the students and the fathers and the community, is to actually come together in a playing field, that nobody knows how to do it. I know, but they don’t. And think about this is a discovery, let’s learn. And that’s part of the work. I always define my work at this triangle of technology is one part of the learning. And then that sort of community building and learning how to actually do co-creation work is another aspect of it. And learning about that social justice issue that we are actually digging into, and trying to critique and that systemic critique is another aspect of it. So it’s more like it becomes a more holistic work. A lot of things to deal with. But I think what is interesting is maybe it becomes more of this sort of past past methods of learning that you just learn alongside somebody who has done it for many years and know how to do it, and you learn in the process. So it’s more of a mentorship sort of way of processing things together. And I think it’s exciting. I think for my students, what I tell them that they need to learn is to unlearn what they know already about all of the processes like production process, and also kind of agency over like having this idea. The idea is that nobody comes forward with an idea. And the idea emerges from the work that we do together. So the unlearning is definitely a big partion of it.
Chelsea Thompto
I was actually, I was blowing glass the other day with the person I blow
glass with. And she’s really good. She’s been doing it for like, 20
years. And I’ve poorly been doing it for like four or five. And she was
like, why are you doing this? You know, we have a good time. And we make
a lot of stuff. But she was like, you know, you could pay somebody to
make this thing that you’re trying to make. And I was like, yeah, I
definitely could pay someone to make the thing. But there’s something
about learning to make the thing. And also, you know, I’m gonna make
something different, because I failed to make the thing I thought I
wanted to make over and over again. And the same thing happens with
technology. And I was telling her I was like, you know, I really think
that, for me, like collecting technical skills, is like, it’s kind of a
hobby. And so being a new media artist is like, that’s the best way to
do it. Because there’s always a new technical skill. And just when you
think you have it pinned down, the new thing happens, right? Or
something updates, or when you said the thing about the AR and the
tablet, I have a collaborative group that I’ve been working with, and
we’re gonna be in the show, and they’re like, great, we only want to run
your A-frame project on this iPad. And it turns out that in an AR
environment, you can’t run video on an iPad, it’s just not possible. And
I spent like, four days over break, just like crying, like typing on my
computer, like, why am I doing this? And then, you know, we found a
solution that’s not the same thing. And it’s like, oh, yeah, but
actually that really did actually give me a whole bunch of new threads
and new things. And so it’s a blessing and a curse kind of thing, where
it’s the technical acquisition can like really slow things down. But in
the trying and failing and playing, you actually, I think, come to more
interesting questions and more interesting solutions.
Lee Tusman
I love that. And I want to thank all of you for speaking. Thanks so
much.
KT Duffy
Thanks for having us.
Chelsea
Thank you.
That was the live audience recording of New Rules: Conversations with New Media Artists. New Rules was recorded on location at Flux Factory, in Queens New York City in February 2023. Thanks to our guests Chelsea Thompto, KT Duffy, Sue Huang and Rashin Fahandej. My name is Lee Tusman. Our audio producer is Max Ludlow.
This season of the podcast is produced with the New Media Caucus for New Rules: Conversations with New Media Artists. You can find out more by visiting newmediacaucus.org.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit arts.gov.
Special thanks to Jessye McDowell, Rebecca Forstater and Nat Roe.
Our music on today’s episode is High water by Artem Bemba, 20 by Lucky Dragons and Ambient Fight by Kirk Osamayo, from the Free Music archive.
You can find episodes, full transcripts, music credits and links to find out about our guests and other topics on our website artistsandhackers.org. You can find us on instagram at artistandhackers, and on mastodon at artistsandhackers at post.lurk.org. You can always write to us on our website. Please forward this or any of of your favorite episodes to a friend. And be sure to leave us a review or feedback wherever you get your podcast.
Thanks for listening.
