Photo by Robert Wrazen

This is an exiting semester for the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Program as this is the first year of our Artist Residency program. For our first resident we had the privilege of inviting artist Sophie Kahn.

Sophie Kahn is a Brooklyn-Based, Australian new media artist who works with video, animation, 3D imaging and Digital Sculpture. She has shown her work around the U.S. and abroad, and has spent the month of September with us creating new work that incorporates 3D Printing and scanning techniques, giving lectures, and teaching a one credit 3D Printing course in the Interdisciplinary Arts department.

Photo by interdisciplinary arts and Media M.F.A. candidate Lilli Kayes

Her practices incorporates the use of new technology like 3D laser scanners and printers, as well as ancient bronze casting techniques, engaging questions of time, history, vision, identity, and the body. In her artist statement, she discusses how her work “owes its fragmented aesthetic to the interaction of new and old media, or the digital and the analog.”   She writes about how 3D scanning technology was not designed to capture the body, “When confronted with a moving body, it receives conflicting spatial coordinates, generating fragmented results: a 3D ‘motion blur.’ From these scans, I create videos or 3D printed molds for metal or clay sculptures. The resulting objects bear the artifacts of all the digital processes they have been though.”

Photo by Interdisciplinary Arts and Media M.F.A. candidate Lilli Kayes

It has been a privilege to have her on campus making work and connecting with students. I’m excited to see what other amazing artists the department brings in as part of this new residency.   Be sure to check out some of Sophie’s work from her website, and be sure to check out our department’s website for upcoming events open to the public!