Transparencias and The Glad Scientist

Transparencias is a mixed reality live performance collaboration with visual artist Catherine Gomez. The piece premiered at the Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, FL in March of 2018.

The piece consisted of scanography of human body parts against green fabric representing the distortion between technology and its inherent exclusive nature. Darker skinned individuals often fail to superimpose on green screen technology, creating a mixture of digital and human composition, usually an unintended defect. For the piece, Gomez chose to highlight this distortion, using it as a driving force of self-reflection of our everyday interaction and development of technologies.

As my work often walks the line of digital and real, Gomez reached out to me about creating a live performance within her exhibition for the opening night. We decided to use the green screen fabric in her works as a live chromakey material, and layer multiple layers (both through the scanography on the walls and in digital stills) in a projection mapped region of the arts center. Gomez, based in Chile at the time of the performance, would control the live visual aspect through remote access as I performed the audio elements of the piece. The result was a performance that embraced the physical presence of a performer in a shifting hyperreality.

Technologies Used

-HTC Vive
-Scanography prints (physical & digital)
-SoundStageVR
-Resolume Arena
-HD Webcam
-JetMidi

Chile: Santiago, Patagonia, & Easter Island

As a Gilman Scholar my Undergraduate Research in the Arts was a fully funded and guided by two university partnerships. Universidad Diego Portales a private urban based institution, and the Universidad de Chile a public institution. Relationships with professors pursuing research actively were established and furthered once on the ground. Research swiftly came to a halt due to work being accomplished by the #MeToo movement, going by the name of ‘Ni Una Más’ (Not Even on More, in a feminine conjugation). At that time in Santiago, Chile the movement was focusing on the systemic violence that needed to be radically and forcibly changed at the collegiate level to protect women against the regional culture and statistics surrounding femicide.

As a woman of color, there, at the collegiate level, I abandoned all efforts of research (with fear of the grant and funding repurcussions) and joined in solidarity to support my Latinx sisters in their fight to establish systemic change and provide women with legal avenues to report sexual harassment and abuse, both in the classroom and by professors. I remain in awe of the organization, leadership, and the demands made. The organizers were in communication and partnered both with surrounding universities and with the press. The university departments were forcibly overtaken and blockaded, and remained closed to all faculty and staff, but remained somewhat open to students. The organizers held elections and voted on what to change and how to change it, events were hosted including workshops on domestic abuse and how to support women in toxic relationship patterns.