IDEALab Residency: Hanny Ahern
Hanny Ahern has joined us as one of our winter IDEALab Residents. What drew us to Hanny was her enthusiasm for our new Residency, passion for collaboration and connection with fellow creative technology practitioners and the communities in which she works, and…familiarity with and affinity for our community of New Rochelle! (In the past year, Hanny has been collaborating closely with a professional dancer who was raised in New Rochelle, recording the dancer’s movement using motion capture technology as part of a special project.)
Hanny moved into IDEALab in November. We snagged a few minutes to catch up with her recently.
Tell us about yourself: My name is Hanny and I’m a media agnostic artist and relational designer.
What are a few things you hope to achieve while you are here? I plan to expand connect, create, adapt, and retrieve. A few of my objectives: 1) Community interconnection and network expansion by hosting idea sessions with collaborators from the greater New York area; 2) Evolving critical research questions through the adaptation of new tools available at here at IDEA; 3) Developing myself as a perceptual tool in parallel by way of drawing and embodied techniques (optics, yoga, movement); 4)Beginning an index of an inventory of found and made virtual objects.
How your IDEALab experience has been so far? Terrific! From the start of my time here there have been so many of serendipitous points of expansion. This feels like just the right place for me to develop my practice in Art Community and emerging everything.
Tell us about some of your favorite New Rochelle discoveries since joining us. It may be too soon for this as I keep discovering new things here in New Rochelle! I actually really enjoy observing people and activity happening at the New Rochelle Train Station (the front porch of the IDEA lab). I just came across Foy Park the other day and enjoyed exploring and documenting that public space. As far as local businesses go, I like the smoothies and juices at Sabrosa Deli, which is just a few blocks from the Lab.
Not only is Hanny using time at IDEALab to focus on her specific objectives, she is also working with us to improve the logistical design of the IDEALab Residency living space based on her own experience running a successful vacation rental upstate. Just another reason why we’re thrilled to have her as part of the IDEALab Residency family.
We expect Hanny to be with us through February 2019. You can follow Hanny and learn more about her work on Instagram (@hannyhead & @_e_x_e_r_c_i_s_e). To apply for the IDEALab Residency, please click here.
