The making of art is the making of the future from the past
--the Jackal Manifesto
As a media artist, I am fascinated by both new and old technologies. My work is centered around the representation and construction of time through technology, particularly the tension between progress and obsolescence. New technologies emerge devoid of any sort of history, in an accelerated cycle of innovations that continually erase what preceded them. My goal is to critique the rhetorics of new technologies while imbuing them with elements of human experience.
There are four strategies that I employ: connecting new media with its often-forgotten history of technological visual spectacle; repurposing old technology to give it new life; applying the effects of time to technologies that are intended to be pristine and eternal; and disrupting the function and content of technologies and media. My most recent work focuses on the disruption of commonplace technological systems, instilling them with human frailties. The current trajectory of my work expands on these ideas, working with the deconstruction of content and media.
Silvia Ruzanka
(b. Cuzco, Peru)Silvia Ruzanka is a Chicago-based multimedia artist working with video, installation, and interactive artforms. Her work is concerned with the archaeology and memory of technology and media, and their intersections with everyday life. She received her BA in Physics from Smith College, and MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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[June 16 2007] Closing Reception and Panel for Domestic Tension
Wafaa and the Domestic Tension Team host a panel and discussion on the history, future, and implications of the project. We ask any of you who are able to volunteer to help with the renovation of the room, in which case you will want to come dressed in paint clothes. Also, we would appreciate it if you bring either food or drink to share with the others who will be helping disassemble this remarkable project.
Saturday, June 16, 3:00 PM
FLATFILEgalleries
217 N Carpenter
Chicago IL 60607
312.491.1190
info@flatfilegalleries.com
[May 2007] Wafaa Bilal's Domestic Tension at FlatFile
I worked on the web interface for Wafaa Bilal's project Domestic Tension, in which he lived at FlatFile Gallery for a month while visitors to his website could watch him 24 hours a day by webcam and shoot at him with a web-controlled paintball gun. The project took on a scale beyond any of our expectations, launching both online debate and cyberwar between botNet hackers and our dedicated sysadmin, Jason Potkanski.
[April 13 - May 12 2007] Becoming in Crossmediale 2 at Gosia Koscielak
A dynamic, computer-controlled video installation, Becoming contains 3D avatars of Ben and myself that we modeled and animated. Over the period of the exhibition, the piece slowly deforms the meshes, exchanging corresponding vertices between our avatars to create hybrid creatures that exist in a perpetually unresolved and dislocated state. This piece continues my interest in 'digital decay' from BitRot, and uses similar code; but the process of decay here is more about constant transformation than about BitRot's focus on time and entropy.
[March 1 - April 14 2007] Pass it On! Connecting Contemporary Do-It-Yourself Culture at A+D Gallery
Check out the DIY show Pass it On!
at Columbia College Chicago's A+D Gallery.
Ben Chang and I designed the interactive timeline, to visualize the interconnections between different threads in this history.
The exhibition runs until April 14, 2007.
[January 7-21 2007] VR/CAVE Workshop, Aix-en-Provence
We built a VR facility at the Ecole Superieure d'Art in Aix-en-Provence, and gave a one-week workshop on 3D modeling and scripting for VR. The lab is a passive-stereo rear-projection display with an Ascension Flock of Birds tracker; the goal is to create networked virtual worlds as a collaboration with students at SAIC.
[June 18 2006] (In)Security Camera in Projecting Off The Wall, ITP, New York
This is a unique show of artwork related to projection and vision, connected to the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
Contact
Silvia Ruzanka
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Dept. of Art and Technology Studies
112 S. Michgan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60603