Approved: 06.06.2018

Cultura Plasmic Inc

Artist, Film-maker, Writer

Approved: 06.06.2018

Multi-pseudonymous artist working with themes of communication, surveillance, cultures of speed and predictability, environment and wellbeing. Eye-tracking projection mapping, digital.

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Thoughts

     

    Artist Statement

    Multi-pseudonymous artist working with themes of communication, surveillance, cultures of speed and predictability, environment and wellbeing. Eye-tracking projection mapping, digital.

    Cultura – from culture. The arts, ideas and social behaviour that arise from a group, as well as the biological conditions suitable for growth

    Plasmic – from plasma. The fourth state of matter consisting of many charged particles, or as in blood plasma, a fluid medium that transports cells

    Inc. – from incorporation.

    Cultura Plasmic INC combines sound, moving image and physical structures to create installations that navigate the relationship between digital culture, the body and space, mental and physical health and how our use of and, at times, dependence on digital technology shapes who we are. Her installations often make use of motion sensors, digital software, tracking devices and drones with metaphors and imagery from the natural environment to examine understandings of nature, agency, and power within the digital landscape. Current areas of interest include the relationship between communication and surveillance technologies, our participation in online networks, cultures of speed and predictability, and use of natural resources to sustain excess online.

    Her works are frequently designed for unusual, non-traditional art spaces, including disused shop units, playgrounds, green spaces, piers, beaches, and derelict buildings. She has created site-specific pieces for DNweekeND (Doncaster), Chorlton Arts Festival (Greater Manchester), Sound UK (rural touring in Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall), Reuse Aloud (New Bridge Project, Newcastle), Wandsworth Arts Festival (London), InTransit festival (Kensington and Chelsea, London), Hackney WickED (London), the Poor Door at A-Side B-Side Gallery (London) and Coastival (Scarborough). In 2016, her cardboard and electronic work Dead Pigeons and Chandeliers featured in a New York gallery exhibit on Politics and Power, and in May 2017, she received the international premiere of her audio-visual installation Watchtower at the European Convention Centre in Luxembourg. In 2018 she was Artist-in-Residence at Cryptic’s Winter season in Cove Park and at Can Serrat, El Bruc, where she developed Living in an Inbox, an installation using eye-tracking technology and projection mapping to explore digital addiction, the attention economy, compulsive message-checking and intrusive advertising.

    CV & Education

    2021      Cryptic commission for SoundBites Thursday lunchtime audio-visual works, ‘Crystalline Unclear’

    2020-21 Sound Pioneers programme, University of Hull and Yorkshire Sound Women Network (postponed until 2021 due to Covid-19 lockdown)

    2020      Artist in an online panel discussion hosted by Autograph ABP and Disability Arts Online, ‘DIS_connect: disability, digital and (im)mobility’

    2020      Sunday Sounds commission, Axisweb, ‘An Inward Outlook: loneliness and the weather’ radio programme, audio replay

    2020      [TELE] in Model Village, an online and physical group show curated by Hotdesque’s Lizzy Drury and Neena Percy

    2020      Art contributor to Glasgow Mutual Aid zine

    2020      Papers published in This is Tomorrow art magazine, ‘Shades of Grey from British-Sudanese photographer Femme Inc.’; and Medium, 'We've washed our hands, now for the dirty work: when soap and morals collide', and ‘Free speech and the paradox of ‘censored’ content that reaches millions of viewers

    2019      Cryptic Nights presents Watchtower with 5.1 sound and 15-min film, CCA Glasgow

    2019      Brewing, new commission with disabled artist and curator Aidan Moesby on social isolation and digital connectivity, ARC Stockton

    2019      Selected artist for Issue 2, Rung magazine, a print and online platform for artist-curator collaborations, run by Isobel Emberson and Frances Kelly

    2019      Living in an Inbox 30-sec mini film edit programmed for Strangelove Time-Based Media Festival, event touring to The Photographers’ Gallery, London (23 February), Turner Contemporary, Margate (2 March), Fabrica, Brighton (11-15 March), Folkestone’s Quarterhouse and Brewery Tap (18-24 March). Theme looks at the ‘fast-paced consumer culture of digital media’, curated by Terry Smith and David Gryn (of Daata Editions)

    2019      Paper published in Medium ‘Subversion in the shadows: making art about darkness, privacy and the data exhaust

    2019      An Inward Outlook: Loneliness and the weather, 30-min radio programme written and recorded for Radiophrenia’s 24-hour broadcast, featuring sound art piece ‘Shipping Forecast for Social Media Sentiment’

    2018      Axisweb’s ‘New Art Highlights of the Week’ for video installation Hold Me, 10-16 Sept

    2018      Paper Against the artist as brand published in Hypocrite Reader, guest edited by Erica X Eisen

    2018     Invited speaker at Global Control conference. Paper: ‘The personality as artwork in online surveillance cultures’

    2018     Artist-in-Residence at Can Serrat, artist-led space near Barcelona, developing Living in an Inbox, an installation combining moving image, sound and projection mapping on digital addiction, distraction, compulsive message-checking and resisting eye-tracking technologies

    2018        19-25 February, five day invited residency at Cove Park organised by Cryptic

    2017      Watchtower at Devonshire Collective’s Digital Weekender

    2017      Watchtower’s international premiere at Luxembourg’s European Convention Centre, Friday Island’s conference including artists’ critical perspectives on Power. Exhibition and public talk.

    2017      Watchtower, programmed for and UK premiere at Coastival festival in Scarborough

    2017      Artist-in-residence at The Auxiliary experimental project space, Stockton (January-March). Recipient of Grants for the Arts award from Arts Council England.

    2017      Density at Roper Gallery, Bath Artists’ Studios

    2017      Butchered at Norwich, environmental art show curated by Kate Knowlden for an urban green space

    2017      Shortlisted for the opening show of the Science Gallery, London, a new video installation on addiction to digital technology through the lens of diet and wellbeing.

    2017      Shortlisted for the Nourish Curatorial Commission at Humber Street Gallery for Hull2017

    2017       Shortlisted 1 in 4 for Spitalfields Music’s Open Call, to develop a piece that used Skype and live performers to explore how we communicate across distances via screens.

    2016      Dead Pigeons and Chandeliers at Ann Street Gallery, New York, ‘Politics & Power’ exhibit. A series of cardboard and electronic works depicting long-term empty mansions in North London which, despite being fitted with luxury furnishings, had never been lived in. These paintings incorporated conductive ink and light technology.

    2016      Shortlisted 1 in 10 for the Collide International Artist residency (3 months in Geneva with CERN at the Hadron Collider and with FACT’s technology lab in Liverpool).

    2016 Shortlisted 1 in 4 for Varc’s 12 month rural residency in Northumberland (£15,000 plus full accommodation and studio for a year).

    2015      Dead Pigeons and Chandeliers at The Poor Door exhibition, A-Side B-Side gallery (shortlisted 1 in 6 for Artquest’s Work Week award, part of Art Licks weekend)

    2015      Ruin Nation at Doncaster’s DNweekeND, a continuation of cardboard and electronic paintings

    2015      See. Sit. Sound at Chorlton Arts Festival, an interactive bench which repurposed technology from a dance mat. Sounds were triggered when people sat down, the full effect could be heard if multiple people sat down together, reclaiming the bench as a social space.

    2014      Ripples on the surface awarded Special Merit Award by lightspacetime, and shown at 59 Paintings, Moderna Art, London Wall. A series of paintings incorporating children’s toy diggers and trucks to explore our relationship to the environment and how we mark the earth’s surface.

    2014      Nesting Instinct at InTransit festival, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hackney WickED, then donated to a children’s charity A walk-in birdhouse with bird’s nest and soundscape bringing the rural environment to a noisy polluted urban space underneath a major road network.

    2014       Access Denied at Facade, Open Wall project curated by Blair Zaye in partnership with Moderna Art

    2013      Eavesdropping at Walton-on-the-Naze, sculpture trail funded by Essex County Council

    2013      Eavesdropping and The Paths We Tread, Sound UK’s rural sculptures tour ‘Playing the Field’. Two installations designed for outdoors incorporating motion sensors to trigger audio recordings collected from rural environments to explore land ownership and attempts to control how Nature is defined.

    2013      Music in the Shape of a Cube at Reuse Aloud, Basic FM, New Bridge Project Space, Newcastle. An interactive installation using Processing and PureData to produce live remix of a piece of music controlled by the audience’s body movements.

    2011      Winds of Resistance, London New Wind Festival (panelist and composer)

    2011      Vision Sound Music Festival at Southbank Centre (composer)

    2010      Glimmer International Film Festival (sound for visuals)

    2010      Hull’s Institute of Creativity and Innovation (sound for visuals)

     

    ACADEMIA

    MSt Musicology (University of Oxford, 2012) – Distinction

    BA (University of Hull, 2010) – First Class Honours & departmental award