Art(ists) on the Verge 9

RAC will host the 9th Art(ists) on the Verge commissions (AOV9) exhibition. Developed and produced by Northern Lights.mn, in partnership with Soap Factory, AOV9 is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for 5 Minnesota-based, emerging artists or artist groups working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory.

Maxwell Hoagland’s The Shallows is a sophisticated-acting, primitive-looking machine that lays bare such “choices” as an infinitely accumulating set of data points about us that are not owned or controlled by us but increasingly define the world we are presented to act in. We must ask why.

Intercropping is an agricultural strategy to plant between the primary crops to optimize watering, soil nutrients, field labor, and yearly yield through greater biodiversity. The installation Mind the Harvest, by Meena Mangalvedhekar, is a “farm” of networked screens and explores intercropping as a means to increase the diversity and nutritional content of the social media we produce and consume as farmers in the digital ecosystem. Our actions today have consequences that may not be clear for generations.

With Founder Effect, Areca Roe has created an immersive, 360° video field guide to the future that imagines—with both the wonder of discovery and a sickening horror of recognition—evolutionary adaptations animals might have developed in response to climate change, pollution, and deforestation.

Stephanie Lynn Rogers’s Security Blanket is a series of comforting, DIY, anti-surveillance, speculative design objects. In an age of social media self-surveillance and continued government overreach, what is the role of privacy and what does it mean to feel safe

Ziyang Wu believes in the power of carnival, with its multiculturalism and characteristics of subversion and resistance, to destroy hypocritical systems of control. Hop aboard Smarter City 2, a phantasmagoric interactive video installation of a future 洛杉京 Los Jing (LA–Beijing) subway stop, and meet a cast of outlandish straphangers. The data behind their shiny exteriors reveal the multitude of ways that the virtual world and data increasingly influence human consciousness.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website