Giving a F@*%: Forms of Feminism in Response to Riot Grrrls

on love letter to a violet augment

The goal for my AR is to respond to the sexist atmosphere of the art world and also of aspects of this exhibition! My AR uses the context behind Ellen Burkenblit's Love Letter to a Violet to reveal a deeper meaning. I am adding to this painting a series of women who are fighting their hardest, yet still are unable to break out of the realm of sexism. The images shown are appropriated from Hollywood films to match the pop art style of the painting and to reference how women are represented in the media. The audio I chose to use in my augment is of women throughout history, including political figures like Hillary Clinton, who have chosen to speak out against sexism in its many forms. These are all layered on top of each other to create a kind of cacophony, which is meant to elicit frustration and be overwhelming to viewers—giving them a small sense of how most women artists feel.

—Christina Chin

on amy feldman’s heavy vector augment

I augmented Amy Feldman's Heavy Vector, 2013. The goal for my AR is to create something I have never seen or experienced before and that I hope triggers some sort of inspiration in others to create something where their own voice is also uniquely stylized. The overarching idea behind my AR is that there is no premeditation. It is all based on intuition and improvisation: what feels right at the moment of creation. That's what zombie abstraction means to me; throwing logic out the window and naturally working through the subconscious mind. I have zero expectations for a user's reaction. They don't have to understand what it means, but I know they will enjoy it because I enjoyed making it!

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—Rafael Rivas

on the Mary Heilmann augment

The goal for my augmented piece is to expand on the painting by rechanneling it as information, layer upon layer. I wanted to add time elements to static 2D images, and give them an organic sense of life. I am attempting to illustrate new ways of defining an exhibition, and hopefully even change the viewing behavior of exhibition goers. Mary Heilmann’s paintings are conceptually two-dimensional sculpture, confirmed by the objects and installations that she sometimes makes. Extending her method, I created 2D sculptures (2D representations of sculptures) based on a photograph of her painting. I want viewers to see the workings of my mind, thereby turning her painting into a kind of living creature, growing and expanding and evolving before their eyes.

ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

—Beier Zong

on the augment of Jackie Saccoccio’s Portrait Stubborn

The hand-drawn animation augment that I created for Jackie Saccoccio's painting Portrait (Stubborn) was inspired by the blotches of paint and different media seen in the work. I broke each blotch into different sections, organized by color, and then turned those sections into a representational landscape to evoke the spirit of the abstracted landscape that Saccoccio created in her painting. Using the abstract environment of Saccoccio's work as my media, my aim was to convey the story of Lilith, who was demonized for refusing to let Adam dominate her. In my animation, Lilith sheds the layers of monstrosity that were put upon her as punishment. She ultimately accepts a snake, a representation of her sensuality and independence, and turns into the self-fulfilled woman she was meant to be. Lilith is viewed as the original feminist, and it only seemed appropriate to honor her in the this all-female group exhibition, named after the iconic Riot Grrrls.

—Jay Thakkar

on the augment of Joyce Pensato’s mural

I’m interested in how AR provides a space for presenting and understanding the liminal. In my work I explore the spiritual, the supernatural, and the ecstatic experience. AR is an elusive hybrid-space that allows the viewer to experience the liminal in a tangible, physical way. I’m interested in creating an experience for the viewer that temporarily suspends concrete reality and opens the possibility for imagining another realm. I’m also interested in how viewers change their posture and become subconscious performed bodies when using AR; in my video installation work outside AR I explore ways in which the viewer’s body can engage with a moving image and how their physical experience changes depending on the size, location, and shape of the moving image. AR provides limitless options for proposing these kinds of altered physical experiences of a moving image.

—Cassandra Davis

on the augment of Joyce Pensato’s Silver Batman

The goal for my piece is not just to show the Joyce Pensato painting that I am augmenting from a different perspective, but also to bring to light a different media, and a new subculture, as radical as the Riot Grrrls were in their own day: the genre of digital media art, in this case Augmented Reality. The idea behind my piece is to connect the 2D to the 3D and to further push Pensato's exploration of the darker side of pop culture in her painting Silver Batman II. I want to let my viewers see things from a different perspective, to put them into a different psychological space. I'd like the viewer to see this work as a new version of a contemporary painting. I am revealing a new kind of digital space behind the painting, a future on the way to revealing itself.

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—Claire Cantor

on the augment of Judy Ledgerwood’s Sailors See Green

For this project I approached augmented reality as the process of giving a mediated makeover to both an historical object and the context in which that object exists. In my case, that object is the painting Sailors See Green(2013) by Judy Ledgerwood, which exists in the context of the white wall of the MCA, feminist history (both art and generally), and the nineties punk collective Riot Grrrls (who do not have a place on the wall of said museum!), among other things. My intention was to identify, break down, and express the many issues and concerns encountered by my Virtual Installation class as a whole, and also by me personally—as a male artist—while developing and executing this exhibition app.