Please refer to our calendar for upcoming information

Pamela Jennings
http://studio416.cfa.cmu.edu

Artwork Description

Sui Generis is a series of large digital print self portraits that explore the relationships and contestations between the body and sciences of the artificial. The prints have been created as thought pieces for a series of interactive mechatronic sculptures. This future work falls under a category Jennings’ calls “Integrative Engineering,” projects that range from self-situated expression to community-based applications while combining practices in engineering, computer science and art. Although the prints were initiated to serve as digital notes, they also stand alone as a unique body of work. One print from the series, Pending Normal is presented in the POWER show.

The Sui Generis self-portraits locate the body as a fanciful machine with hints of technological tropes that suggest the relationship of technology to the functioning of the body. The series includes the images Pending Normal (72 x 44 inches 2005), Corpus Escapement (72 x 44 inches, 2005) and Neither|Nor (36 × 44 inches, 2006) and Speaks Volumes (size to be determined, 2007). The skeletal figure in Pending Normal has been annotated with numbers and code understandable only to those in the medical profession. The spine, a stack of gears blossom like flowers as a chalky white substance is sustained in the location where some may think the heart belongs. Neither|Nor references the fact that Jennings was born with a concave surface in the back of her mind. Like Winterson’s webbed feet, she celebrates eccentricity by molding the fatty layer of her cranium to reflect her Boolean likeness, the NOR symbol. Inspired by the idiom “neither fish nor fowl,” she reveals the complexity of what she may or may not be. Corpus Escapement references Jennings’ fascination with mechanical devices designed for navigation, time keeping and computation. In particular, her interests are focused on early mechanical computational devices such as astrolabes, gear clocks, lantern projectors, and Babbage’s Difference Engine. It is the innovation of these types of devices that enabled societies to explore, conquer, pillage and enslave new worlds by controlling the navigation of time, space and territory. She is interested in the ironic juxtaposition and comparison of these types of devices to the body that is both intact and altered – the next frontier. Speaks Volumes, speaks volumes.

Artist Statement

Jennings' digital media art works make visible personal narratives by revealing hidden realities while simultaneously encouraging public discourse. In particular, her research in critical creative technologies is informed by a convergence of critical theories of technology, human centered computing, and critical research practices in digital media art and interaction design. Her research and practice focus on the creation and evaluation of experiential media that facilitates face-to-face dialogue and revealing of personal narratives in situations where the exchange of ideas, observations, dreams, concerns, and celebrations may be silenced by societal norms about how we engage each other.

Bio

Pamela Jennings' art work has been cited in Lisa Farrington's Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists, Oxford University Press and Phyllis Klotman and Janet Cutler's Struggles for Representation: African American Film/Video/New Media Makers, Indiana University Press. Her papers have been published and presented in the 2005 ACM Creativity and Cognition, 2005 Human Computer Interaction Consortium, several Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) symposiums since 1997, several ACM Computer Human Interaction (CHI) workshops, 2003 Interact Conference, and the 1999 European Union I3Net Symposium. Her journal articles have been published in the Leonardo Journal for Art and Science, Convergence: the Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, and the CAA Art Journal. She has exhibited her work at the FE Gallery (Pittsburgh), 707 Contemporary Gallery (Santa Fe), Parson's School of Design (New York), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), National Academy of Sciences (Washington D.C.), Studio Museum of Harlem (New York), List Center for Visual Arts (MIT Massachusetts). She has shown in numerous national and international film and video festivals.
Jennings' internationally recognized digital media arts research policy advocacy work includes the New Media Arts | New Funding Models white paper commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, and co-writer of the Helsinki Agenda documentation of the 2004 Experts Meeting on International New Media Arts Policy sponsored by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA). She was curator for the Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary: shared visions between art and technology exhibition held at the National Academy of Sciences Rotunda Gallery in Washington D.C. in 2007.

Pamela Jennings is an Assistant Professor of Art and Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom. in the Center for Advanced Inquiry in Integrative Arts program (CAiiA); M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York City; M.A. from the International Center of Photography and New York University; and B.A. from Oberlin College. pljenn@gmail.com http://studio416.cfa.cmu.edu

Sui Generis, Pending Normal
Digital print
72 x 44 inches

Return to POWER