Digital Arts Resource Centre (DARC) is thrilled to announce our exhibited artists for Part 1 of the Fall 2024 LED Exhibition. This exhibition allows our diverse community of members to showcase their digital artwork on our impressive 7ft LED display. As we invite submissions, we aspire to inspire passersby of the Arts Court building and affirm our shared commitment to fostering a vibrant, inclusive, and supportive artistic community.
Part 1 of our Fall 2024 Exhibition features works by Emilie Crewe, Anamika Deb, and Linh VH Nguyen, and will be on display from October 1st to 30th, 2024.
Cell-Culture by Emilie Crewe
Cell-Culture is a “scanimation” artwork, a stop-motion technique where high-resolution digital images are meticulously captured using a scanner bed. The title, drawn from the world of biology, alludes to the petri dish—a vessel essential for cultivating cell cultures. This project is a convergence of science and art, blending the literal with the metaphorical. It highlights the glass surfaces of the scanner bed, the exhibition space of the DARC LED screen, and scientific glassware, while intertwining the concept of artistic culture with the growth of bacterial cultures. The work stands as a layered pun, inviting viewers to consider the intersections between aesthetic experiments and biological processes.
Emilie Crewe (she/her | b. 1987, Québec City, Canada; raised in Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist based on unceded land known colonially as Vancouver, Canada. Her practice often takes the form of multi-channel and single-channel video, installation, and new media. Emilie holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally in galleries, museums, artist-run centers, experimental film/video festivals, and as public art.
Neural Terrain V.2 by Anamika Deb
Neural Terrain V.2 is an immersive video installation that delves into the duality between natural and digital landscapes. The work uses procedural generation to create evolving terrains, exploring the fluid interplay between organic and technological worlds. The black-and-white elements symbolize the binary nature of computation, while the colored textures represent the computer’s mimicry of nature. This continuous transformation underscores the overlap and tension between these realms, inviting viewers to reflect on how technology evolves by referencing and replicating natural patterns. The dynamic visual experience challenges the perception of nature and technology as opposites, highlighting their intrinsic connection and the growing presence of digital landscapes in our lives.
Anamika Deb is a multimedia artist and scenographer based in Montreal. Her work explores the intricate dynamics between humans and the spaces they inhabit, focusing on deconstructing these relationships to discover new methods of world-building that transcend traditional 3D paradigms. Deb’s practice challenges invites viewers to rethink their impact on the environments they engage with. Her multidisciplinary practice includes interactive and immersive audiovisual art, generative-computational art, virtual world reconstruction, augmented reality, set design, and large-scale public sculptures. Notably, her work “Neural Terrain-V.1” was showcased at the Glitch Cinema Festival in Zagreb, Croatia, in 2022. Her recent piece, “Chamber of Memories,” created during HACKLAB24 at SAT Montreal, won the Bourse Printemps Numérique award.
Slime Mold Network by Linh VH Nguyen
This animation explores complex network formation through the lens of simple decision-making, inspired by the algorithmic movement of Physarum slime mold. Each individual mold organism explores in an outward direction and reacts to chemical trails left behind by other molds. Coded in p5.js using Patt Vera’s open-source tutorial, each iteration offers a unique experience due to the inherent randomness in the slime mold’s behavior. One iteration was recorded and tailored specifically for the DARC LED panel. This piece simulates “natural growth” within a digital realm, evoking the sensation of an organic entity evolving on screen, offering a moment to reflect on the presence of algorithms in many systems around us and the interplay between simplicity and complexity.
Linh VH Nguyen is an multidisciplinary queer artist exploring interconnectedness and multiplicity. Using a variety of techniques including historical photographic processes and digital manipulation, Nguyen creates 2D images as well as animations. They draw inspiration from their Vietnamese heritage, critical theory, biological systems and movement practices.
Part 2 of this exhibition will take place in November 2024.
