xxnft
Carla
Gannis
Which was your first NFT ever?
My first NFT was released on elementum art in the first week of March 2021.
Link to the most recent one?
This is an independent NFT on teia.art from this summer:
GOED MMXXII
An animated gif made on the occasion of the artist's solo exhibition "The Garden of Emoji Delights" at Fotografiska Museum, Tallin.
All proceeds from this NFT will go to the support of Ukraine. The number of editions for this work mark the 133 days that have occurred, at the minting of this NFT, since Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine.
And this NFT is currently on view in the Crypto Pong exhibition.
*STAY TUNED I have some other projects launching soon, but can’t release details on them yet.
How/why did you begin to upload your work on the blockchain?
As an early adopter of technologies and someone who has been involved with many new media/digital artists through friendships, exhibitions, symposia, panels and collaborations for many years, in early 2021 I began participating in group shows and on platforms, because it seemed important to be involved and to be having important and critical conversations about the what/why and how of blockchain – its impact on art and culture at large, as well as the ways in which it could provide more agency to digital artists. Some of the first shows I took part in include Pieces of Me, presented by TRANSFER Gallery and The Bardo: Unpacking the Real on Feral File.
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What is your most recent project?
My most recent gallery project is “The Elevated Line” at Ryan Lee Gallery that opened on Oct 27th and will be up until Dec 23rd, 2022.
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An excerpt from the gallery’s essay on the work: “RYAN LEE is pleased to present in RLWindow Carla Gannis: The Elevated Line, the debut of a new landmark video work, of the artist’s Yonder series. Based on 3D images captured along the High Line, the nine-minute looping video with original music by R. Luke Dubois is a cinematic view of a stroll down the Chelsea promenade as perceived by a cyborg with combined human and computer vision. During its walk, this character encounters a kaleidoscopic cast of characters including avatars from various past projects from 1998 to today. This video is a milestone project within Gannis’s three-decade career: long interested in investigating the overlapping realities of the physical and digital worlds, she began incorporating digital elements in her painting-based practice upon her arrival in New York in the 1990s.”
Please feel free to take screen grabs from the video here
Additional images here
Exhibition website here
My most recent NFT project is “CryptoPong,” a group exhibition that presents both Danish and international artists: Eve Sussman [Snark.Art], White Male Artist AKA Cassils, Lawrence Lek, Ida Kvetny, Jonas Kasper Jensen, Diana Velasco, Claudia Hart and Carla Gannis. The invited artists have in common that in various ways they are pioneers in the field called XR art. XR covers Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 3D and NFT (non-fungible token), among others. “CryptoPong” is curated by @radarcontemporary. Images here and link to exhibition website.
And my most recent augmented reality project is #MakeUsVisible x denkFEmale, a show in Munich that exhibits 31 digital AR monuments representing womxn, transgender and non-binary communities in Munich, to bring diversity into the sculpture landscape. The event is part of the City of Munich's "past statements" series, a project on monuments. Image here and link to exhibition website.
When did you start using digital/new media for your creative practice?
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I began working with new media in the mid to late 1990s. I was transitioning from a painting based practice into working with new media and post-photographic processes.
I first began working with an avatar, Sister Gemini, to represent myself in 1998 (first through written stories, then through drawings, an interactive website and video). This is a “performance video” of Sister Gemini.
ABOUT: "Sister Gemini" Carla Gannis's avatar from the late 90s/early aughts until whenever she emerges again. First conceived in 1998, this video excerpt is from a 2001 Sister Gemini “performance.” Sister Gemini is a cyborg: half human, half AI, from "no place" who [fictionally] breaks into websites, performing with an electronic dulcimer & singing cyber ballads. Voice & Music: Julia Frodahl/Edison Woods & Wax Sound Design Studio | Production & Design Assistance: Andres Sanchez.
Can you dive a bit into the technical aspects of the works? Software or hardware used (in the wide sense; it could be thoughts and bodies), as well as the editing process? What are some of the particular challenges you and your team have faced in realizing the works?
I begin with an idea, and I use a wide range of technologies to evolve and instantiate my idea as a non-linear narrative expressed across platforms and into tactile forms. Many of my projects include drawings, 2D digital printworks, moving image works, 3D digitally printed sculptures, AR or VR experiences, installation and sometimes real-time avatar performances. My editing process depends on the project and on if I am working alone or with collaborators and assistants. Given my maximalist tendencies, editing is generally a complex operation for me on a conceptual and technical level. Even though I set parameters near the beginning of a project, as I progress I widen the distance between them, like traffic cones on a highway, to allow more of the flow that comes through the process of translating an idea into a “thing.” For my moving image and XR wok in particular, I produce an extreme number of iterations. I vindicate myself, to my more rational, sleep-appreciating self, when I discover authentic ways to express meaning that complicate, subvert or expand the default output of a particular software or system.
Can you step outside yourself for a moment and let us know what you see?
I spend quite a bit of time stepping “outside of myself,” as I work with numerous avatars. I imagine that “we” may concur on seeing in my successful works (not all of them are) mise en scènes that are attempting to share idiosyncratic beauty, dark absurdity and conceptual rigor.
How can we increase the involvement of women in web3/NFTs/digital art sphere?
To make the web3/NFT/digital art sphere increasingly diverse through more inclusion of womxn and other marginalized groups it truly “takes a village…” a proverb attributed to African cultures and associated with the raising of children. If we think of contemporary art as our collective child that we hope to foster and grow in an environment that supports the evolution of compassion, empathy and equity in humanity, we all need to, in our roles as facilitators, critics, curators, artists, educators, institutions, DAOs, collectors, and influencers, work together in making space for and promoting those who have been excluded.
Can you tell us about the relationship you want or aim to have with the viewer? What is the underlying approach to this relationship?
Over the past 20 years I have aimed to build relationships with participants as much as viewers – a result of a multimodal approach to exhibiting my work. For instance one can participate in my wwwunderkammer project by donning avatars and moving through simulated environments encoded with 3D visuals and spatial audio. Audiences can view tangible sculptures, drawings, and print works; they can conjure augmented reality overlays. I think of wwwunderkammer as a “worldingverse,” because it exists in multiple dimensions simultaneously, as a virtual, physical and mixed reality installation without a single entry point nor a beginning and end.
Interwoven into this array of media is my invitation to experience our shared cultural landscape through a refractive looking glass. It is my intention to share mindscapes (eScapes, iScapes, xScapes) that slant rhyme with our perceptions of reality.
As our big blue marble feels increasingly home to a host of horror shows screening 24/7, there are human collectives across the planet enacting visionary change when and where they can. Participants may find in my worldingverses, along perceptual, sociopolitical, and personal paths, uncanny reflections of themselves and society.
Do you get any particular source of inspiration for the visual styles of your works e.g. do they arrive in relation to the place (physical, psychological, or situational) you were located at the time?
Much of my inspiration comes from the deconstruction of contemporary media, its plethora of signs, symbols and protocols used for “everyday” communication that I then remix with historical references from across a spectrum of fields: visual art, science, literature and feminist theory.