Artist Write-up

While I was enticed by Anish Kapoor, Do Ho Su, and Sarah Sze, I ultimately chose Jennifer Steinkamp. This is due to my unfamiliarity with her work but interest in what she is doing with technology. Projectors, 3D animation, architecture, space, light, and organic subjects are intriguing to me. As a person looking into New Media studies she seems like a perfect artist to research.

She initially studied experimental animation at California Institute of the Arts. Her schoolwork was designer focused, but through her friends, who were painters, she took some art classes. She became confused about her place between art and design, thinking “Art can make design better”; but, then realized she was an artist not a designer. She had a class about the first computer animation used in film and her life was forever changed. She then dropped out of school to work with computers in Hollywood, as there were no classes on computer animation.

Eventually she went back to school, studying at Art Center College of Design, and in 1991 finished her academic coursework earning a Master of Fine Art. In addition to her artwork, she now teaches at UCLA as a professor in Design / Media Arts. She is currently 53 years old.

I have noticed that most artists don't “Make It” before the age of 50. We don't hear about them until later in their life. Is that because it takes a while for their work to spread around? Is there some invisible barrier separating them from wide-spread acceptance? Before you can make it onto any documentaries or PBS specials? Perhaps the world is waiting to see your staying power. Jennifer has hundreds of exhibits, performances, publications, articles, and awards. Starting in 1988 up to 2011 she has been working in art and exhibitions, which seems substantial.

She has a lot of work to browse through and the more I read of her descriptions the more I understand her plays on space and form. Turning staircases into a gagging throat, giving architecture gender specific meanings through projected images, or moving images to induce a feeling of liquid floors and walls Jennifer has been staying busy. Light and shadows became a way for her to more intimately involve the audience in many of her works, as in “Smoke Screen,” “Lap,” “Swell,” “Double Take,” “Naysplatter,” “Happy Happy,” and

Her first research into spatial interactivity was “Phase = Time,” which was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. It was 32' long x 11' tall, in a room 39' x 38' x 24'. Viewers affected the speed and color of the projected image, water falling off the edge of the wall, and soundtrack as they passed sensors.

In 2000 she was commissioned by the City of Las Vegas to create the “Fremont Street Experience” which was 4 blocks long and was a 5 minute video projected on to curtain 90 feet up in the air on multicolored posts with little computer-vein looking arms. Overall pretty incredible. The color, space, form, lighting, scale are inspiring.

She continues her work with interactivity in “Anything You Can Do, Swing Set” in which each swing controls a layer of the image and has its own soundtrack. Sensing motion in all directions, the image would stretch or skew. Again in “One saw; the other saw” she uses motion sensors to explore looking and shifting perspectives. As the audience moves by the sensors the perspective of the work shifts allowing you to experience complex ideas about perception on a physical level. Both playful and interactive, using line and color to show a visual response to the viewer.

She began to turn her projected images from more abstract shapes, lines, and patterns into realistic images in her newer work starting in 2003, often using trees, vines, and flowers. As if by being blown by a breeze projected plant life sways and twists as if it were sitting in a field. You can imagine the roots stretching beneath the ground in front of you and the base cleverly rests on the horizon line. She looks at how we have used plants in our history, not just art's history, and often uses themed plants for her pieces, such as Victorian-aged or all poisonous flowers. It seems she is using Maya or some similar program to create these 3-D renderings of plant life.

She continues to use plants to explore life cycles and renewal when she creates “Vanished.” Set inside a doorway the branches swirl about and the leaves change color and eventually fall off. Her continued practice and work with 3-D software is critical to her work and she views the software creators as collaborators. While her work evolved with the software she hopes you first think about the art before the technology behind it.

From dematerializing architecture, transforming space with projection, inviting the audience to be a part of the work, or simply making something beautiful that transcends its own space and inspires awe, her work is exploratory and playful. I, personall,y look forward to more of her work, as I am tied to her interests in transforming space, using light, motion, sound, color, and interactivity.