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Hello there! I have been the worst at posting my work and projects. I am starting to come up with a schedule for myself to be a bit more consistent. Better late than never! I can’t believe I’m nearing the end of my first season as a podcast host. The brilliant team over at Art Practical have given me an awesome home to create PRNT SCRN and I’ve learned so much this past year. Special thanks to Leila Weefur (EIC for Audio/Visual), Marissa Deitz (Editor), Vivian Sming (EIC for online publication), Michele Carlson (Executive Director), Fiona Ball (Managing Editor), and Mia Nakano (Communications Manager) for being such a wonderful team of people to work with.

Virtual reality is not a new phenomenon. From dioramas to panoramas, the allure of being enveloped in a place or tableau outside of one’s reality has mass appeal considering the popularity of virtual reality technologies such as the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. Through 360 filmmaking and photography, the creation of space within the virtual realm has become commonplace. From journalism to entertainment purposes, while virtual worlds enable a new way of seeing fantastical worlds, artists and designers must consider format and aesthetics. In the second part of a two-part series, “Not Your Average Playtest,” I look at how artist Veronica Graham translates her drawings and paintings into digital architectures within the virtual world. She also touches upon how she must reconcile physical and digital perception to create immersive experiences.

Give episode 5 a good listen and let me know what you think! I’m all ears. 😉

You can also access all of this season’s episodes here!

Veronica Graham is an Oakland based visual artist primarily working in print and digital mediums. Inspired by today’s rapidly changing environment, she sees her art practice as a form of world building. Each work is the creation of place or artifact, calling attention to how fiction is weaved into our reality. In 2012 she founded Most Ancient, a design studio focused on small press and digital production. Her books have been collected by SFMoMA, MoMA, The New York Public Library, The Library of Congress, Stanford University, Yale University, and other public and private collections. Graham has received grants from Kala Art Institute and Women’s Studio Workshop. She is now designing virtual worlds and her first VR project called  “The Muybridge Mausoleum” was completed in 2017 for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift platforms. In addition to her own practice, Graham is an active member on SFMoMA’s Games Advisory Board and an arts educator who has taught at San Francisco Art Institute, Southern Exposure, and Creativity Explored.

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PLACE TALKS is a series of visual lectures that occurs at the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. Bay Area artists, writers, designers, architects, archivists, librarians (and other curious people) share talks on location-related topics, illustrated by content from the library’s collection.

I am absolutely honored to be a part of this line-up of stellar artists and writers! You can find out more about the talks and information about the library here. See you on September 27th!

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I have been invited to be a panelist for a discussion titled, “Making Art in the Age of #45” as a part of public programming at Kala Institute. Bay Area-based artist Christy Chan invited me and I am constantly humbled and honored for these opportunities. In 2015, I wrote a review of Christy Chan’s performance for online art publication Art Practical. She will re-enact The Long Distance Call at New Normal / Old Normal – a performance and panel discussion. Tickets can be purchased for the event here.

Information for the performance and panel discussion appear below:

Performance starts at 7pm, Doors open at 6:30pm
Panel Discussions at 7:45pm or 10 min after the performance ends.

Admission 10 – $25 sliding scale
(Recommended Member $15, Students $10)
NOTAFLOF (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Kala Art Institute is excited to present New Normal / Old Normal, a performance and panel discussion on Thursday, September 6 at 7pm. Artist Christy Chan will present a re-staging of her performance The Long Distance Call followed by the panel discussion Making Art in the Age of #45.

Expanding on her own personal experiences and interactions with KKK members during her childhood growing up in rural Virginia, Chan presents The Long Distance Call, a re-enactment of phone calls between Chan and Miss. Anne, a KKK seamstress in Alabama. During the phone calls Chan convinced Miss. Anne to provide her with a custom-made Klan robe for her video work. Their unsettling yet banal phone calls tell the story of an unexpected interaction between two women, from trust gained to the eventual abrupt end of their communications. The Long Distance Call is performed by Catherine Lerza and Christy Chan.

The original phone calls took place in 2013 and the re-enactment was first performed in San Francisco at Southern Exposure in 2015, two years before the Trump administration took office and the KKK and extreme right became politically emboldened for the first time since the 1970’s.

Following The Long Distance Call, Kala will present Making art in the age of #45, a panel discussion with Ryanaustin Dennis (founder, co-director of The Black Aesthetic), Guillermo Galindo (composer, sonic architect, performance and visual artist), Christy Chan (artist), Favianna Rodriguez (artist) and Dorothy Santos (writer, editor, and curator). Panelists will explore how the role of the arts and artists working in race, class and political issues has evolved since Trump’s inauguration. The panel moderator is Bay Area comedian Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, winner of the Liz Carpenter award for political humor (previously awarded to Samantha Bee) and hosts The Moth in San Francisco.

Tickets are $10-25 sliding scale.

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When: Wednesday, July 11, 2018 | Time: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM PDT

Purchase tickets for this event here.

The growing influence of new media in the contemporary art market has led to new forms of selling and collecting digital art. From Blockchain startups to galleries selling artwork as digital editions, digital downloads, or art as a subscription (think: Spotify for visual art). In this panel we’ll discuss popular methods for collecting and selling digital art with Mark Lurie, founder, and CEO of Codex; Badir McCleary, Assistant Director of The KNOW Contemporary; Antwaun Sargent, writer, and art critic; and Kamal Hubbard, a blockchain researcher, blogger, and advisor. The panel will be moderated by me – Dorothy Santos!

This program is presented in conjunction with the current exhibition Digitalia: Art & the Economy of Ideas, on view through August 26, 2018.

 Image: Tony Gum, Xhosa Woman – Intombi I, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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When: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | Time: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM PDT

Purchase tickets for this event here.

Join us for a discussion with a digital artist Mark Sabb and creative technologist Iddris Sandu about the ways culture influences technology, and the way Black art concretely shapes global culture and can even influence the tech infrastructure. The conversation will be moderated by art and technology writer and editor Dorothy Santos.

Iddris Sandu is a Los Angeles based creative technologist — a Kanye West x Elon Musk hybrid. He’s the mind behind the software that many of us use every day. From Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter, to Uber self-driving cars, and even the White House. Iddris has been honored by President Obama. The 20-year-old award winning savant considers himself more of an architect than a software engineer. Someone who places the world’s problems into perspective and then designs life to affirm solutions. Iddris and hip-hop artist/entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle collaborated to build LA’s first smart store leveraging Iddris’ tech and design background and Nipsey’s cultural influence. The store features include augmented reality to access artwork on clothing and to stream music. Their collaboration drew interests of many journalists as well as hip hop and cultural icons like Russell Westbrook, Vegas Jones of Roc Nation, and Diddy.

Mark Sabb is a digital strategist, artist, and designer dedicated to the intersection of arts and community. Through independent collaborationsMark has cemented himself as a cutting-edge digital artist in San Francisco, and in 2014, along with Michael Warr, Mark was granted the Creative Work Fund award as part of the multimedia project, Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point.

Dorothy R. Santos is a Filipina American writer, editor, and curator whose research interests include digital art, computational media, and biotechnology. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, she holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco and received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow.

This program is presented in conjunction with the current exhibition Digitalia: Art & the Economy of Ideas, on view through August 26, 2018.

 Image: Chromatin 23, courtesy of the artists Francois Beaurain and Medina Dugger

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On Saturday, January 20, from 12-2 p.m. I will be participating in the second part of a two-part program, which will be a reading and recording of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed.

Artists Danielle Aubert, Sofia Cordova, Liz Hillie, Courtney Johnson and I will read from The Dispossessed with an emphasis on the marks found in over one hundred used copies. Gallery visitors are welcome to sit and listen to the reading and to follow along with a used copy. This reading will be recorded.

To learn more, please visit the event link here.