Creative Conversations: Media, Massage, & Machines
In mid-June the IDEA hosted three artists in our residents’ nest above the New Rochelle train station: Matthew Gantt, Rena Anakwe and Joelle Fleurantin.
On his website, Matthew Gantt describes himself as a “New Music Human.” He’s is a composer and media artist who approaches whose practice runs the gamut from traditional musical instruments to web art and VR. Our ideas about the future are often conditioned by past experiences in ways few of us fully acknowledge or understand, he explained. When we encounter something for the first time and slot it into an existing category, we risk missing what’s actually new about it.
He led a discussion about how new technologies and artistic breakthroughs emerge from previous ideas, focusing especially on the developments of the 21st century.
Matthew brought up Marshal McLuhan’s famous book “The Medium is the Message.” When the book was first printed, a typesetter accidentally made an error, printing it as “The Medium is the Massage.” McLuhan told the publisher to keep the error — he thought it was a perfect way to describe his ideas.
It’s not a bad way to describe the work of Rena Anakwe, either. Actor, athlete, model, and creative technologist, Rena is a woman of many talents. Right now she is focused on using tech to improve mental health.
She shared with us her “Living Narratives” project, which incorporates color theory, psychological cognitive behavioral theory, olfactory processing and spiritual cartography into a series of performances that explore relaxation and mindfulness.
Technology can be a source of stress, she said, with reference to the onslaught of notifications, emails and texts that texture life in the age of constant connection. In “Living Narratives”, Rena investigates ways technology can be used to relieve stress, instead.
We at the lab were lucky enough to receive a performance of “Living Narratives” in which Rena mixed music and field recordings with soothing visuals and scents (clary sage, holy basil and lavender oil, in our case) to reimagine technology as a powerful therapeutic tool.
Finally, Joelle Fleurantin presented a few of her projects. Joelle is a digital storyteller who uses a variety of interactive tools to tell narratives in a human-centered way. “Patchworked Venus”, which she shared with us, is anerotic-haptic-device. The interactions Joelle has designed into this wearable are intended to fuse the wearer’s body with the suit on an experiential level. Her work calls to mind Donna Harraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”, one of the earliest and most influential writings about the blurred lines between bodies and machines.
“If we are all cyborgs now,” Joelle asked, “how can an erotic device be an extension of the user and not a facsimile of a person not present?” Joelle told us that she designed this erotic garment as a symbol for her “long term relationship with technology”.
She then led the group in a discussion about wearable technology more generally. Wearables allow people to experiment with a range of experiences; it can limit or augment mobility, alter appearance, afford people more control over their capacities. We explored concepts around digital consent, embodied virtual experiences and ways in which human rights and civic responsibility extend into virtual space.
IDEALab is a live/work residency and fellowship program in the train station of New Rochelle, NY created by IDEA New Rochelle a project of the New Rochelle Downtown BID and the City of New Rochelle. We bring together creative technologists with leaders in the field of emerging technology and work with partners to support community led projects in the city of New Rochelle.
Please apply here if you would like to be a part of a future fellowship cohort at IDEALab.
