What do you think would happen if you dropped a self-described media artist/creative technologist into a free and open environment to consider technology as a canvas. Meet Barak Chamo – current Artist-in-Residence at Materials for the Arts. In his new exhibition, Everything and Nothing at All, presented by Materials for the Arts at ChaShama 14th Street, the artist attempts to embody the challenges of living in an invisibly despotic digital age.
In this exhibition, Chamo explores a wide range of topics from mass surveillance to online misinformation and mechanical automation. Here, viewers are encouraged to reflect on the ways technology manifests in our daily lives, and our seemingly endless consumption.
This new body of work created during his residency at Materials for the Arts brings new meaning to repurposing, or as he puts it ‘Cracking things open/hacking the form’ to ask the question ‘what is the cultural/social motivation behind the way technology shapes our lives and our lives shape technology in a sort of endless cycle.
Get to know a little more about the artist and his creative process in the interview (below) with CURRENTS New Media. Here, he speaks to the link between technology and media as interchangeable, as well as the way we consume the world around us, and what that means about our place in the world ~ and the purpose of technology in our lives.
If you are wondering what may have brought his thought process to this point, it is probably in his life’s previous chapter as a software engineer, working with tech companies and startups. Working each day on how technology is used in advertising, marketing, and business focused his attention on consumption.
Leaving that world and entering the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU Tish for Chamo was a complete liberation as he entered into Media Art. He now was able to ‘flip the script’, turning the screen into a mirror, using the same tools, but drawing attention to new critical insights assessing human interaction with technology that push automation and replication to absurd, yet alarmingly familiar, extremes.
Barak Chamo: Everything and Nothing at All will be on view January 20th, with Opening Reception on January 20th from 6:00 to 9:00pm at ChaShaMa Gallery, 7 East 14th Street, NYC. Opening Reception to be held on Thursday, January 20th and Friday, January 21st from 6-9pm. Please RSVP Here.
We leave you with this thoughtful video (below) entitled ‘Metro’ ~ the artists interpretation of the loneliness of city life inspired by the works of Edward Hopper and rotoscoping video techniques.
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