Morehshin Allahyari
A Position Outside - digital colonialism, monstrosity and fabulation
Artist's talk by Iranian media artist, activist, educator, and curator Morehshin Allahyari
March 15, 2019
Human Computer Interaction is increasingly engaged with the social-cultural context that people live in everyday. The city, in all its grit and glory, provides a complex and rich context in which to understand the challenges technologies face when they are adopted by people in the real world. In this presentation, I discuss three on-going research initiatives from my group at Cornell Tech in New York City which grapple with interaction in the urban context: Trashbots in the City, Urban Fingerprinting, and Communal eXtended Reality. These projects highlight different aspects of urban interaction--culture, scale, engagement--which demand new approaches from researchers and practitioners in HCI. In this talk, I will also champion the perspectives that HCI brings to the already crowded urban landscape.
Morehshin Allahyari (b. 1985 in Tehran, Iran) is a media artist, activist, educator, and curator who uses computer modeling, 3D scanning and digital fabrication techniques to explore the intersection of art and activism. Inspired by concepts of collective archiving, memory, and cultural contradiction, Allahyari's 3D printed sculptures and videos challenge social and gender norms. "I want my work to respond to, resist and criticize the current political and cultural situation that we experience on a daily basis," she explains. She is developing a new body of work on digital colonialism and 're-figuring' as a feminist and decolonialist practice, titled She Who Sees the Unknown. Researching female monsters, jinn and dark goddesses of Middle-Eastern origin, Allahyari devises narratives through practices of magic and poetic-speculative storytelling, re-appropriation of traditional mythologies, collaging, meshing, scanning, and archiving. Continued development of the project is supported by a joint commission from The Whitney Museum of Art, Liverpool Biennale, and FACT, as well as a 2018 Rhizome Commission. Recent accolades include a residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn (2018), a research residency at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (2016-17), a sculpture award from the Institute of Digital Art (2016), and Foreign Policy Magazine named her a Leading Global Thinker of 2016. Other outlets featuring her work include Huffington Post, Wired, NPR, National Geographic, Rhizome, Hyperallergic and Dazed Digital. Her work has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops at venues throughout the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou in Paris, France; Venice Biennale di Archittectura; Pori Museum, Finland and Museum fu?r Angewandte Kunst, Germany. Allahyari received her MFA at the University of North Texas, MA at University of Denver and her BA at the University of Tehran, Iran. She is co-creator of the 3D Additivist Manifesto and subsequent 3D Additivist Cookbook. |
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