Category: DATA Mentorship

CRIPTYCH showcases a year of intensive project development from members of the DATA program, a collaboration between Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba and Video Pool Media Arts. This exhibition confronts outdated modes of therapy, unearths skeletons in the mental health care system, explores inner worlds of digitally-mediated self-examination and negotiates boundaries between vulnerable states of dependence, dis/ability and agency. The artists in CRIPTYCH take extraordinary lengths to share their experiences through these profoundly personal artworks.

A Greek myth, a contemporary sound artist and a blacksmith walk into a bar. Driven by an ever deepening curiosity, artist and novice blacksmith Ken Gregory reaches into the past to explore the story of the birth of Hephaetus and how it relates to our contemporary society. Using blacksmithing traditions as a foundation for creating an immersive soundscape, Gregory examines how contemporary society has given short shrift to those whose bodies and/or minds don’t fit in to what is considered normal.

Portal Revisited 2019 is a revision of a responsive installation work that was begun in 1999 but wasn’t completed until this year. It uses iPhone 4’s to investigate how networked devices for human communication have dramatically transformed the intersections between our bodies, our consciousness and our machines. The phones are programmed to perform a series of specific behaviours that give them the appearance of sentience.

Queer ecology calls us to reimagine many ways of being and acting, from self expression to defence. An example of this is looking at how some bee colonies in their swarm formation collectivize and defend in a wave-like action which is sometimes referred to as shimmering. Through movements that demonstrate solidarity and strength, the community works together in a stunningly visual display that protects and asserts presence.

In 2016, the Japanese satellite Hitomi-ASTRO-H spun out of orbit and broke up. The cause of the accident was ascribed to both software and human error. In reading multiple reports on this event, Lincoln was interested in the anthropomorphic language used to describe the satellite’s behaviour just before the breakup. Lincoln began to explore this assigned agency by speculating on what Hitomi’s “state of mind” would be from dealing with the conflicting error messages. The result is an installation of two sculptural works, Aerial Effusions and Hitomi, in a conversation.