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7 Sep 2022
Marika Grasso is exhibiting her work this week at the Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts (DRHA 2022) conference. Marika is currently studying for her PhD exploring Unresponsive touchscreen: a tactile relationship through Material Art Practice
Marika is one of 14 artists showing work at the DRHA 2022 conference exhibition, hosted at Kingston University’s Stanley Picker Gallery between 4th and 10th September 2022.
Background
When a touchscreen is touched, lights and sensors respond, and an operating system starts working, interacting with our finger’s movements, following a set of fast decisions. The artefact installation aims to suggest a reflection regarding the state of technological matter and its cultural impact both in daily life and in the wider cultural sphere.
The smartphone is an intimate symbol of today’s digital interaction. It is an element of perpetual presence and capacity to adapt and perform according to our needs. Nonetheless, we also perform for the smartphone; we become an instrument of content creation through our voice, movement of the fingers, and the eyes. The human body’s intelligence extends beyond the hand and the brain, and it senses and expresses through new modes of communication, by touch.
The installation
The installation Touched Screens includes a set of artefacts shaped as the touchscreen placed in the gallery space in an unusual position, in relation to the human body, such as the floor, ceiling, and the top portion of the wall. The touchscreens placements creates a distance between the person and the sleek disrupted surface of the screen.
Related >> Marika Grasso to exhibit at CHItaly 2021 “Frontiers of HCI”
The exhibition
The DRHA 2022 exhibition interrogates the parallel emergencies that define our post-pandemic world, and the protagonist role that digital technologies and science play within it. Inspired by the title of this year’s conference, “Digital Sustainability: From Resilience to Transformation”, the artworks featured in the exhibition consider existing challenges while, also, inviting us to speculate on what might come next.
The exhibition will be on from September 4 to September 10, 2022 at:
Stanley Picker Gallery
Kingston University London
Kingston School of Art, Grange Road
Kingston upon Thames KT1 2QJ
Opening Hours: 11:00-17:00 Thur-Sat.
About the artist
Marika Grasso is one the PhD studentship cohort who joined Lab4Living in October 2019, following the Research England award which focusses on the Future Home and 100 year life. Her practice focuses on a material practice-based approach and Touch as an interactive tool to explore materiality and the self. Her research uses art practice to explore the relationship between the human condition, touch and conductive materials. Marika’s interdisciplinary approach is inspired by neuroscience, textile craft and technology.
Marika took part in the online residency @Transient, and attended the Activism Neuroaesthetics in Cognitive Capitalism SFSIA 2021. Her work Beyond touch-screens was exhibited at the CHI Interactive experience in University of Bolzano. In 2022, she completed a University of Chicago online course ‘Neurobiology of Everyday life’ and took part in the online residency @Orbit to experiment with touch screens and casting. More recently she has participated in a projection mapping installation for Sheffield DocFest.
Personal website: grassomarika.academia.edu