May 16, 2006
Gizmodo Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Sabrina Raaf
"With an ever-increasing amount of technology intended to “improve”, “augment”, and / or “add convenience” to our busy lives, there seems to be less of an emphasis on creating devices to reflect or comment on our natural or built environments. Taking this challenge as a starting point with her work, Chicago-based artist, Sabrina Raaf, examines the seemingly “invisible” elements of modernized and technologically equipped spaces by re-interpreting this covert data through mechanized objects that create feedback in the form of sound or other visual outputs. From exploring live data sets in the immediate gallery space with “Translator II: Grower”, a robot that measures carbon dioxide levels and draws corresponding blades of grass on the wall, to exploring the tension between humans and adaptive or automated systems with “Dry Translator”, Raaf’s work exposes the unspoken conflicts between society’s push for technological autonomy and the struggle to retain human emotion and sensibility. Her most current work, “Icelandic Rift” comments on the almost “alien” nature of future forms of agriculture that could exist in zero-gravity environments.
Gizmodo recently caught up with Raaf to discuss her unique and calculated artistic approach to creating work that not only challenges common perceptions of technological utopia, but also examines just how deeply we’ve become entrenched in high-tech fetishism." [via coin operated]
Posted by jo at May 16, 2006 12:51 PM
