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Artist Statement

I am an interested in the creation of meaning by the active perception of the viewer with a focus on formal qualities and visceral effects rather than narratives. I generate or repurpose simple or generic elements (primitive shapes, graphics shaders, sine tones, basic colors, plastic, or foam figures) and try to disrupt previous associations with these elements to allow the viewer to examine and consider them more closely. I create algorithmic or generative real-time applications to define the context, behavior, life and identity of these elements.
I am very interested in examining media, its formal and material qualities, and internal structure. I am inspired by complex systems and the unique life they sometimes take on and interested in the frictions, difficulties and disruptions that occur with encounters such as interactions, data re-mappings and transmissions. I see many of my works as machines which create an entity, situation or feeling. I am inspired by the industrial processes involved in media and design and feel the process of making a work is integral to its life.
These works are based in programming and often incorporate sensors (subsonic or ultrasonic microphones, depth or LIDAR data, accelerometers and touch capacitors,) data (climate data, motion-capture or photogrammetry) and generative autonomous behavior.
I am uninterested in the cult of personality surrounding artists. I want my work to have autonomy from myself and hope to connect with viewers on equal terms, through shared experience rather than one-way communication.

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Artist Bio

 

Sarah Bennett-Davidson is an interdisciplinary media artist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work emphasizes perception and the viewer’s active construction of the scene and its context. Informed by architectural theory, experimental film, object-oriented programming, improvisational and stochastic music, and 20th century conceptual art, she creates works which emphasize the system and consider the interface, whether it is an interface between sound and image, viewer and artwork or an individual and society. The daughter of Free Jazz composer Lowell Davidson, she studied dance at Merce Cunningham’s studio, and was exposed to experimental music and art from a young age which strongly informed her work. Creating algorithmic work since the early 2000s, she has recently begun exploring physical manifestations of the digital.

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