Artist’s Talk: Physical/Non Physical

Description

Jeff Thompson (Institute of Technology/ Cambridge)

 

Abstract

Our descriptions of the digital often invoke either a non-physical sublime (black box, algorithm, zeros and ones) or the adamantly real (internet infrastructure, server farms). As an artist, I find the somewhat more messy space between the two much more interesting, a modulation between the the poles of digital abstraction and physical object. In this talk, I will discuss some of my recent creative work that addresses these issues, including “Turker Computers,” a project asking Amazon Mechanical Turk workers to photograph the computers they work at, “Microscopic Dust,” a 2-micron piece of dust from the surface of my hard-drive scanned and enlarged a trillion times larger, and “Computers on Law & Order,” a website documenting 11,000 screenshots of computers on the television crime show.

Biograpghy

Jeff Thompson (b. 1982, Minneapolis/USA) is an artist, programmer, and educator based in the NYC area. Through code, sculpture, sound, and performance, Thompson's work physicalizes and gives materiality to otherwise invisible technological processes. He is currently Assistant Professor and Program Director of Visual Art & Technology at Stevens Institute of Technology, and co-founded the experimental curatorial project Drift Station.

Thompson has exhibited and performed his work internationally at venues including the Museum of the Moving Image, Sheldon Museum of Art, the Taubman Museum of Art, SITE Santa Fe, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, the Jersey City Museum, and the Weisman Art Museum. Recent commissions and residencies include Bell Labs, Abandon Normal Devices, Brighton Digital Festival, Impakt, Rhizome, Turbulence, Harvestworks, and Holland Computing Center, the supercomputing facility for the University of Nebraska system.

Thompson is currently a Visiting Fellow at King’s College and artist-in-residence at the Computer Laboratory, both at University of Cambridge.
 

 

 

Open to all.  No registration required
Part of Digital Art Research Network Seminar series

Administrative assistance: Networks@crassh.cam.ac.uk