∞ Snow Raven ∞
An almost confounding combination of traditional shamanic and high-tech activity by Sofy Yuditskaya Snow Raven is a performer from the Republic of Sakha, now…
Shamanic Slow-quin with the New Nature
It is said that Guqin players can summon spirits, predict the future, and convert the energies of Yin and Yang to their needs, and that the origins of Guquin playing come from Wushi or shaman. From 1644 until 1912 the Quin Emperors had an official shamanic shrine at the capital in Beijing and consulted professional shaman, usually women, in the forbidden city as part of their ruling duties.
Imagining the Universe with Hands and Heart
Cecilia Wu’s piece entitled “Embodied Sonic Meditation: Resonance of the Heart” captures hand gestures and their fluid changes making mudras via leap motion and machine learning, triggering associated musical phrases and gestures as well as video of the Buddhabrot fractal deformations processed by audio filters also triggered by the mudras.
Danu–A water Ritual Performance
I had the pleasure of experiencing Danu, an incredible performance that emerged from a workshop by Smirna Kulenovic during this ARS Electronica festival of…
Touching the Unknown
Artist Sultana Zana on going deep, de-colonizing our perception of space at-large, encountering the unknown, and the in-betweenness of gender.
The Electromagnetic Goddess
Jess Rowland is a post-punk computer programmer and destroyer, leader of the cult of the Electromagnetic Goddess, her own Goddess to channel herself in her performances. Jess is the paradigm of whatever wave of feminism we are on right now: Jess is authentic even though she is making it all up. The two cultures she is blending are cyberculture and internet culture. She is an academic and underground artist working in the US. Her provenance and aesthetic come from and have a deep interplay with punk. Jess engages with hardware and networks on a sculptural level looking at the very physical and natural principles that govern the behaviour of the materials she works with.
Secret Pope Ministering on Governor’s Island
The Secret Pope is a video homage to Pope Joan, considered fictional in today’s society, but a beloved story during the middle ages of a female pope that rose through the ranks of Christianity with her wit and skill. Pope Joan dressed in men’s clothes, but was discovered as a woman when she became pregnant. After she was discovered body examinations practices were put in place so that no women could rise to power in Christianity ever again. Gaze upon her as into a mirror, the Secret Pope is all of us.