SPEAKEASY SERIES: GLITCH
SPEAKEASY SERIES: GLITCH
An open forum of artists’ practices at the intersection of the body + technology
with Jake Laundry, Jordan MacIntosh-Hougham, + Afroditi Psarra
THURS SEP 26 / 5PM
Velocity 1621 12th Ave.
FREE
Join Velocity for the first Speakeasy of our Fall Series! In this event, Velocity Bridge Project alum Jordan MacIntosh-Hougham, Seattle musician Jake Laundry, and DXArts Professor and artist Afroditi Psarra will open up their practices to participants for play, experimentation and discussion. Together, we will explore the limitations and avenues of collaboration between the body and machine, and the creative practices that emerge from those interactions.
ARTISTS’ BIOS
JAKE LAUNDRY is a musician and comedian. Kinda like Beck, kinda like Steve Martin. Jake’s debut, self-produced, altpop album, “Über Millennial ©,” is about social media politics and cohabitation.
Jake’s live show is a self-styled “cyborg drama”: a multimedia performance of his music, accompanied by fake virtual personalities and the audience’s actual posts to Jake’s Facebook. https://jakelaundry.bandcamp.com
JORDAN MACINTOSH-HOUGHAM was raised in Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. They graduated with a B.A. from Bennington College in 2016 and are currently based in Seattle.
By hybridizing their experience with dance and video, and actively queering these forms, they create work that challenges rigidity. Often working with elements of humor and spectacle, their pieces revolve around themes such as anxiety, catharsis, paranoia, and nostalgia, but are also inspired by queer feminist writings, science fiction, and cinema. Through a combined exploration of technology/media, the body, and objects, they create experiences that reshape boundaries, and support and encourage radical empathy.
They have participated in artist residencies at EMPAC, Velocity Dance Center and Studio Current and have worked for artists such as Kota Yamazaki, Dana Reitz, Elena Demyanenko, Liv Fauver, Karthik Pandian, Andros Zins- Browne, Wade Madsen, Heather Kravas, and LanDforms. https://badbaddance.com
AFRODITI PSARRA, PhD (Athens, 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist working in the intersection of electronic textiles and physical computing with sound art. Her research focuses on the art and science interaction with a critical discourse in the creation of artifacts. She is especially interested in physics as a way of perceiving the invisible universe that surrounds us, and in mathematics as a means for designing and computing technological artifacts. She engages with concepts such as the body as an interface of control and resistance, crafting and the revitalization of tradition as a methodology of hacking existing norms about technical objects, diy and diwo techniques as educational models for diffusing knowledge and experimenting with ideas.
She holds a PhD in Image, Technology and Design from the Complutense University of Madrid. Her academic research Cyberpunk and New Media Art focuses on the merge of science fiction ideas and concepts with performative and digital practices, and offers a philosophical, sociological and aesthetic analysis of the influence of new technologies in the contemporary artistic process.
Her work has been presented at numerous platforms such as Siggraph in Vancouver, Ars Electronica in Linz, Transmediale and CTM in Berlin, Amber in Istanbul, Piksel in Bergen, Electropixel in Nantes and MakerFaire in Rome between others. She has worked as an intern on Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing at Disney Research Zurich. She is currently appointed as assistant professor at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) of the University of Washington, teaching media arts history and theory, electronic art, and media performance, and running the DXARTS Softlab. She is based in Seattle, US. http://afroditipsarra.com/
PHOTOS – Courtesy of the artists
