^{Fractured: Digital Topographies
February 9 - March 2, 2019
Opening reception: Friday, February 8 from 6-9 pm
Artist talk and workshop with Doug Rosman: Saturday, February 23 at 3 pm
Performance by Katie Wood: Saturday, March 2 at 3 pm, closing reception to follow}
A topographical survey traditionally accounts for the natural and artificial features of an environmental landscape. The information gathered allows scientists the ability to assess the space for navigation and planned interventions to the area. This one-dimensional reading of a natural landscape does not account for the complex systems in which these interventions can affect socioeconomics, intrapersonal spaces and power dynamics. In Fractured: Digital Topographies, four artists examine these dimensions as spaces where forces of globalization, technology and social conventions engineer an evolving and unfamiliar land.

Daniel Salamanca Núñez (MFA 2019) positions six unique video works in a single sculptural object, each of which interrogates ways of understanding human cognitive processes. The constructed terrain of the sculpture allows for new interactions and meanings to emerge. Doug Rosman’s (MFA 2019) practice tests the limits of self-exploration and excavation mediated by digital technologies, using his own body to be read and mapped by machine algorithm. Katie Wood (MFA 2019) examines the ways that an individual's sense of belonging consciously adapts to spaces as they change. Wood’s multimedia installation uses cinematic and sonic documentation to reflect on the dynamic landscapes of Chicago and rural Virginia. With the use of interactive software, Jiaqi Zhan (MFA 2019) places the participant in a city where each action reveals the complex system of social hierarchy. The consequences of a society that surveils and quantifies the moral character of its inhabitants unfolds through decisions made by the player.

Fractured: Digital Topographies is curated by Emily Carranza, Nicolay Duque-Robayo, Rebeccs Haley, Lasondra Kern, and Victoria Peña, all students in the Masters of Arts Administration & Policy department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Featuring graduate students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Daniel Salamanca Núñez MFA student in the Painting and Drawing Department, Doug Rosman MFA student in the Art and Technologies Studies Department, Katie Wood MFA student in the Sound Department, and Jiaqi Zhang MFA student in the Art and Technologies Studies Department. Fractured: Digital Topographies was made possible with the support of the Shapiro Center for Research and Collaboration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

February 2019