Claudia Larcher was born in Bregenz, Austria. She lives and works in Vienna, Austria. She is a visual artist with a focus in (site specific) video animation, collage, photography and installation. From 2001 to 2008 she studied « Transmedia Art » at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Since 2005 she has participated in various group exhibitions and festivals in Austria and abroad and presented her work in solo and group exhibitions: f.e. Tokyo Wonder Site Japan, Slought Foundation Philadelphia, Weimar Art Festival, Centre Pompidou Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art/ Roskilde, steirischer Herbst in Graz, Manifesta 13 and Anthology Film Archives in NYC.
Impact Art AT launched with a conversation between Patrícia and ZERO1 Executive Director Shamsher Virk at Ars Electronica Festival Online 2021.
The talk introduced the public to Patrícia's creative practice through her works such as BLOW! (2019), Sensorial Screen #2 (2018), and Underneath the Skin Another Skin (2015) which explores audience participation using intimate, haptic approaches and how deconstruction and transfeminist hacking are critical to her process.
“In Search of Truth” expresses a collective concern towards an excessive trust, dependency, and reliance on new technologies in the digital age, by tackling some of its troubles — such as the digital self, artificial intelligence, and mobile tracking — or by speculating on “true” presents and futures. The diverse works in this exhibition are works-in-progress, statements, and essays on how truth is perceived differently within distinct contexts and points of view. A common theme that arises is the wish to unravel the truth in solidarity and by enveloping otherness — whether that is through the self-other or collective-other. The new media forms embedded in the diverse artistic projects were selected intentionally by the artists, with deep community-driven awareness, recognizing the impact of the proliferation of technology on human and non-human lives and bodies.
Stephanie Andrews is an experience designer and creative technologist interested in exploring economies of collectivity, care, and communication. Her work seeks to respond to emergent issues with levity and sentimentality, primarily taking the form of flux kits, software tools, art games, tactile spaces, and participatory installations.
Stephanie brings to her art practice an interdisciplinary background spanning software engineering, interaction design, public policy, social work, and community organizing. She specializes in building interactive systems that use digital, physical, and interpersonal mediums to create communal space. She is currently a resident and instructor at Gray Area.
Jenny E. Balisle earned a B.A. in Art and Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and a M.F.A. from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. Exhibits include the de Young Museum Artist-in-Residence, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Chicago Cultural Center, Korean Cultural Center, Harvard University, Farmington Museum, Museu Brasileiro São Paulo, and Shanghai Oil Painting & Sculpture Institute Art Museum.
Her work has been featured in such publications as The Huffington Post, WOMENCINEMAKERS, A5 Magazine, ZYZZYVA, The Drum Literary Magazine, and Sculptural Pursuits Magazine. Public art includes The Cube Art Project, Hearts in San Francisco, and South San Francisco Utility Box Mural Project.
Balisle works as an artist, advocate, curator, writer, lecturer, and instructor at UC Berkeley Extension.
Sharmi Basu (they/she) is a multi-media performance artist, curator, and composer. They create work that addresses vulnerability, accountability, and experiences of millennial diaspora through creating narratives of decolonial thinking toward individual and collective liberation. Her performances and sound pieces via their primary performance project, Beast Nest, show us that the abstract and immaterial experiences of trauma and pain can be liberated through our abstract creations in art and sound. They believe that transcending the emotional landscape is the key to accessing multidimensionality, and works with these ideas in her Decolonizing Sound workshops and her improvisation group, the Mara Performance Collective. They host a number of workshops that center on sound healing and self-accountability, as well as technical skill-shares. She is also a certified mediator focused on interpersonal healing within Queer and Trans BIPOC communities.
Her ultimate goal through her work is to cultivate a sense of vulnerability and empowerment for herself and her community.
Erik Contreras is an interdisciplinary designer and engineer with a background in mechanical engineering and rapid prototyping. His work involves prolonging the lifespan of consumer electronics and finding alternative uses for post-consumer products. His design philosophy seeks to promote user repair, modification, and disassembly for consumer products. As an advocate for the right to repair, he wishes to develop consumer products that “welcomes the end-user, inside and out.” He hopes by empowering the user, the false promises generated from consumer culture can be stripped away from our products.
Erik typically uses a hands-on approach towards his work/research and can be found hacking obsolete pieces of technology or 3D printing custom parts in his home machine shop. In his free time he enjoys woodworking and restoring vintage audio equipment.
Dance, sing, gesso, code, cut, glue, twirl, twist – Marlys Mandaville uses their work to navigate through their surroundings and community, document time, and provide a platform for other community members to storytell. Playful and curious, they use pop overtones and undercurrents of humor to create entry points into serious subject matter. Working across painting, sculpture, sound, and video, they create immersive worlds that act as accessible spaces for conversation about community needs and goals. Mandaville graduated with their M.F.A. in Art from Mills College in 2021, where they received the Hung Liu Award for their MFA thesis work. They hold a dual degree in Environmental Studies and Studio Art from Macalester College (2015), where they graduated with an Art Department Merit Award, and the Ann Bolger Vision Award for their work with Fossil Free Macalester. Mandaville was a 2019 Soaring Gardens resident in Laceyville, PA, and a 2021 Hinge Arts resident in Fergus Falls, MN.
Avital Meshi is a new media artist and incoming PhD student at the Performance Studies Graduate group in UC Davis. Meshi holds an MFA from the Digital Arts and New Media program at UC Santa Cruz and a BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds a BSc and an MSc in Behavioral Biology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Meshi’s practice focuses on performance and AI technology. She examines the influence of AI algorithms on our behavior and on our social environment. She invites viewers to intermingle with the technology and find out how they are seen through its lens. Meshi’s goal is to allow viewers to regain their agency and reveal their own power to act upon the technology. Her artworks usually provoke conversations regarding identity and embodiment, identity transformation, social roles, role-playing, identity tourism, cultural appropriation, machine-based surveillance, recognition, and classification.
Meshi was born and raised in Israel. She is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her artworks have been exhibited in Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, Root Division Gallery in San Francisco, Sesnon Gallery in Santa Cruz, ACM SIGGRAPH, NeurIPS, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, and more.
Parul Wadhwa is a new media artist and immersive storyteller. As an XR director-producer, her artwork includes virtual and augmented reality experiences, immersive and interactive art, digital storytelling, and serious games. She is committed to the use of new technologies (AR/VR/XR) for impact-based storytelling. She creates work as an Artist-in-Residence at StoryCenter and currently is a Facebook Oculus Launchpad Fellow, Adobe’s Creative Ambassador and most recently, was a new media entrepreneurial fellow at Catalyst, NYC Media Lab. Previously, she worked in the entertainment industry in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and India. Her work has screened at film festivals, museums, and conferences around the world including the MOMA, New York and the American Film Institute, Washington DC. She is an Interactive Fellow Alumna of the prestigious Tribeca Film Institute, New York, and a European Social Documentary (ESoDoc) Alumna, Italy. Parul holds an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from the Digital Arts Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Impact Art AT is a public diplomacy initiative designed and implemented by ZERO1 and the Open Austria Art + Tech Lab, funded by The Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport, and produced in partnership with Ars Electronica.
