Interdisciplinary art at Waterfront
A Chinese-Canadian based in New York, Sougwen Chung has a BFA in graphic design and a diploma in Interactive Art from Hyper Island in Sweden. Her interdisciplinary process spans drawing, video, animation, 3d, sound and installation.
An internationally exhibited artist, her work has been shown at The Art Directors Club in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Geneva, Switzerland, amongst others.
Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Dazed and Confused, and Creators Project, and her client list includes Chanel, Jagermeister, Nike, and Ghostly International, along with musicians Tom Waits and Sepalcure.
In your work as an interdisciplinary artist, you explore the transitional edges of art. Your practice encompasses installation, sculpture, hand drawing and performance, in an effort to experimentally challenge ideas about form. Can you tell us more about this approach of yours?
My approach to working with different mediums is a bit like journeying through different virtual realities of process. I’m of the generation that grew up very screen-influenced, and I have a background in UX design, so there is a tendency to be very cerebral about the design of various tools in different mediums influencing behavior / cognition. Each medium carries a set of rules, each tool has unique properties that influence the output. You could say my process is fueled by a fascination with digital interfaces that translates back into tangible, established art-making tools and practices.
Your Tumblr ”Goth Screenshots” has expanded to include a T-shirt merchandise line. Where did you get the idea to make ordinary interfaces dark and expressive?
“You have no new messages”. “Remember me on this computer”. In some ways these messages are how designers have projected the voice of the machine back towards the user. The dystopian humor of it comes out when you stare at the screen too long. It’s a strange reliance on dopamine hit of notifications that makes the technology invisible, among other things. But sometimes, inevitably, the prosaic veil of the interaction it is lifted and it can be unsettling, but also kind of funny.
Gothscreenshots is an ongoing series that explores the image of the interface when stripped down of the human element, of the white noise around it. By removing the message or call to action (or inaction) from the context it re-contextualizes it in a way that we interpret as dark and expressive. It makes the invisible visible, in a way that you’re unable to see in the same way again.
You have a BFA in graphic design and a diploma in Interactive Art from Hyper Island in Sweden. Has your time in Sweden made an impact on your art?
I cherish my time in Sweden. Particularly in the winter, the city of Stockholm was like a illuminated white canvas. My time in Hyper was stimulating in that it allowed me to observe different models for group learning. The energy of the school was uniquely vibrant as well, like living an encapsulated lifetime in the experimental curriculum. The two aspects, the education and environment, in tandem were quite memorable.
Информация по комментариям в разработке