Virtual Lyric Books
with Lee Blalock
ART & TECH 604 001 | 3 credits
Online | July 5 - 21, 2024 | 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. CST
As humans, we perpetually process a great deal of information from every direction, in every form, and often it isn’t kind enough to come in linearly, for easy digestion. Processing this noise doesn’t always happen in a thorough and organized manner. Instead, we often sample bubbles of thought that float between fiction and perceived reality. This course invites artists to explore practices that allow for bursts of thought using software and text. On our way to skill-based workshops, we will discuss contemporary media artists working with text, computation, and technology including Mendi + Keith Obadike, Allison Parrish, Nick Montfort, and Judd Morrissey. The generative poetry of early computer artists, excerpts from The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, and the experimental text practices of different art movements will all supplement and inspire this class experience. We’ll look at art that marries text with technology and discuss how this affects how language is understood. Artists will create two works-in-progress that take cues from algorithmic techniques, song lyrics, combinatorial writing, and concrete poetry and receive hands-on experience placing these ideas in virtual environments using the game engine software Unity and code software p5.js. Students should provide their own computers and will be given access to the softwares.
Lee Blalock is a Chicago-based artist and educator presenting alternative and hyphenated states of being through technology-mediated processes. Interested in how technologies support the idea of impossible anatomies, behaviors, and performances, her work is an exercise in body modification by way of amplified behavior or "change-of-state". Lee’s interests include embodied cognition, anatomy and biomechanics, bionics, mechatronics, human/non-human entanglement, retro technology, and computational abstraction. She has presented work domestically, internationally, and virtually at many institutions including Feral File (online), Ars Electronica (online), the wrong biennale (online), NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), ICA (Philadelphia), 205 Hudson Gallery (New York), and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Art and Technology Studies / Sound Practices Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and practices various forms of embodiment as an everyday athlete.
Lee Blalock, sy5z3n_4: Medi(a)tation for Virtual Respiration, 2019, 56 modified resin Buddha models, 40 solenoids, 28 LEDs, wood, gold leaf, custom software, video, and sound, 4 x 4 x 5 ft.