San Francisco, CA – The San Francisco Arts Education Project (SFArtsED) and Leonardo/ISAST are pleased to announce the hybrid launch of Domestic Light, a project by artist Ian Winters running from June 21, 2023 - June 21, 2024 in the SFArtsED gallery at Minnesota Street Project. The gallery will host a hybrid reception with the artist on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at 12:00 PM PST. Viewing hours are Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. in the gallery space at 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA.

Domestic Light is a multi-year project consisting of a participatory network of multi-spectral color sensors, hosted in household window sills in a maximum number of time zones around the world. Recording the shifting character of domestic light worldwide, the live data time lapse these sensors generate will be used to create a real time color portrait of “home”– both domestic and planetary– over the 2023 - 2024 solar year. Beginning on the 2023 solstice, video displays will be presented in the gallery and on the Domestic Light website. In 2024, the project will culminate in an immersive installation, a live audio/visual performance by Winters and Pamela Z using sound contributed by sensor hosts, and a special section in Leonardo Journal. A structured data set will be archived at the University of Sussex Humanities Lab.
 

Domestic Light aims to better understand the disparity between how natural light is perceived and mediated, and explores the nature and character of its networked relations. The project offers a new way of noticing how our bodies build the notion of home and the passage of time, based on the qualities of light where we live, and how mediated images of nature are sensitizing us as a species. Its data set will be available for public use and interpretation.

Partnering institutions include: Leonardo / ISAST with support from The Creative Work Fund, the University of Sussex Humanities Lab, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and the San Francisco Arts Education Project. Key collaborators include: Weidong Yang, Pamela Z, John MacCallum, and Allison Leigh Holt. 

 Save your spot at this amazing event today!  

About the collaborators:

Ian Winters is an award-winning media and performance artist. Often collaborating with composers, directors, and choreographers, he creates both staged and open-ended visual and acoustic media environments internationally. His work with noted ensembles and directors in performance, and in more traditional video and visual work, has been supported by the Creative Work Fund, the Rainin Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Djerassi, and EMPAC, among many others. He maintains an active worldwide teaching practice, leading workshops in live media and the integration of sensors, physical performance and site-based pieces. He studied video and performance at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, followed by training in dance / physical theater, and architecture. He is also the co-curator of MilkBar with Mary Armentrout. www.ianwinters.com, 37 North, Inc.
 

Weidong Yang, Ph.D. is founder and CEO of Kineviz. Supporting world-class businesses, agencies, and nonprofits, Kineviz' revenue-funded team of scientists, computer engineers, and artists connects humans with data and provides visualizations of complex data to gain insights for better outcomes. After conducting theoretical and experimental research on quantum dots, Weidong spent 10 years as a product manager and R&D scientist in the semiconductor industry, where he invented Diffraction-based Overlay technology to improve the manufacturing precision of silicon wafers. He also co-founded Kinetech Arts, a non-profit organization bringing dancers and engineers together to explore the creative potential of making art via new technologies. Weidong has been awarded 11 US patents; contributed to 20+ peer review publications; and holds a doctorate in Physics and a Masters in Computer and Information Science from the University of Oregon. https://www.kineviz.com/

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist making works for voice, electronics, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), and the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She has composed scores for dance, film, and chamber ensembles (including Kronos Quartet and Eighth Blackbird). Her awards include the Rome Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Dorothea Tanning Award, the Guggenheim, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. www.pamelaz.com

John MacCallum is a Berlin-based composer. Often practicing in collaboration with choreographer Teoma Naccarato, their work together draws on their backgrounds in music composition, choreography, computer science, creative writing, performance art, and philosophy. They have presented at venues in Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, Phoenix, London, Hamburg, and Berlin. They have been awarded artist residencies at research centers such as IRCAM (Paris), Djerassi (California), CLOUD/Danslab (The Hague), and Lake Studios (Berlin), and their published articles have appeared in journals across a broad range of disciplines. MacCallum studied music composition at UC Berkeley (PhD), McGill University (MM, Montreal), and the University of the Pacific (BM, California). https://iii-iii-iii.org/

Allison Leigh Holt is a neurodivergent artist and a Fulbright Scholar (Indonesia) using techniques of expanded cinema and the Light And Space movement to model various ways of knowing. Holt’s research–based work has been supported by The Ford Foundation Gallery, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the David Bermant Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Denise Montell Laboratories (UC Santa Barbara), and Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (Indonesia). She exhibits, screens, and lectures on her work internationally, and has been a resident artist / researcher at Sanggar Perbakayun (Indonesia); the Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology; and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Her writing has been featured in Yale’s Theater Magazine, Panorama Journal, and Public Journal. https://www.oillyoowen.com/

About Partnering Institutions: 

The Sussex Humanities Lab, a flagship research program at the University of Sussex, is concerned with the eco-socio-cultural potentials and impacts of an increasingly digital world. SHL experiments with digital methods in research, investigating the interactions between technology and culture, society and environment, in order to imagine and create more sustainable and just futures for all. Founded in 2014, its substantial awards of external research grants have nurtured deep interdisciplinary collaboration in Digital Humanities and related teaching portfolios, with members spanning the arts, humanities, engineering, informatics, social science, life sciences, and the University library. Its research has a wide disciplinary reach, from community archives to AI, media theory to conservation technology, critical heritage to intersectional feminism, digital humanities to experimental music technology, and critical making. https://www.sussex.ac.uk/research/centres/sussex-humanities-lab/

The mission of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program is to support and enhance the creativity of artists by providing uninterrupted time for work, reflection, and collegial interaction in a setting of great natural beauty, and to preserve the land on which the Program is situated. Djerassi is recognized internationally for its pre-eminence as an artist residency. We strive to provide the best possible residency experience for artists of superior talent from a diverse range of backgrounds and geographical locations. As stewards of a unique and beautiful property, we also seek to preserve the land and use our facilities wisely and efficiently for maximum benefit to the artists and with the least impact on the environment. https://djerassi.org/

Leonardo / International Society for Art, Science, and Technology is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 enterprising think tank, offering a global platform for creative exploration and collaboration that reaches tens of thousands of people across 135 countries. Since 1968, Leonardo has forged a worldwide transdisciplinary network to convene, research, collaborate, and disseminate best practices at the nexus of arts, science, and technology. Including scholars, artists, scientists, technologists, and thinkers, this network experiments with cutting-edge approaches, practices, systems, and solutions to tackle the most complex challenges facing humanity today. Leonardo, its flagship publication, is the world’s leading scholarly journal on transdisciplinary art, and anchors a robust publishing partnership with MIT Press. Its partnership with Arizona State University infuses educational innovation with digital art and media for lifelong learning; and its creative programs span events, exhibits, residencies and fellowships, scholarship and social enterprise ventures. https://leonardo.info/

About SFArtsED

SFArtsED supports artist residencies in an array of visual arts, dance, drama, musical theater, world rhythms, and choral expression at public schools and at after-school programs. It offers workshops and summer camps in a wide range of disciplines, with scholarship assistance. SFArtsED offers a rigorous after-school and weekend musical theater training program, and has a strong relationship with Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA), where students gain valuable outside experience in lighting, sound, and stage management in their technical theater program. Artists, singers, and dancers at the high school and college levels benefit from internship opportunities at SFArtsED’s summer camps and school programs. https://www.sfartsed.org/