CURATED BY
MICAH LOCKMAN-FINE
Transforming human experience
Through digital rendering
Pearlstein Gallery
08.19 10.04
1/2
CURATED BY MICAH LOCKMAN-FINE Digital Twin showcases artists and designers who investigate human experience through digital
CURATED BY MICAH LOCKMAN-FINE
Digital Twin showcases artists and designers who investigate human experience through digital of technology on physical and psychological existence. of technology on physical and psychological existence.
From the early internet to social media to quickly
From the early internet to social media to quickly metastasizing chatbots and image generators, humans metastasizing chatbots and image generators, humans provide the code, provide the code, algorithms, images, algorithms, and interactions images, and interactions that create digital worlds. But as we spend time in that create digital worlds. But as we spend time in these digital worlds, the data we output is changed digital worlds, the data we output is changed – extracted, these sold, amalgamated, categorized, reformed – all being marketed at us. – while extracted, sold, back amalgamated, categorized,
reformed – all while being marketed back at us.
and these “digital twins”? How can we leverage of Information?
and these “digital twins”? How can we leverage
In Digital Twin, artists diagram cyclical adaptation between humans and our data (Tin Ta, Victoria of Information? Wohlforth, Lewis Colburn); adapt technologies
Balkhyoor); and hack technological fabrication to In Digital artists cyclical adaptation create pro-human futuresTwin, (Cooper Wright, diagram Emil Polyak, Darren Woodland, Nicole Feller-Johnson). between humans and our data (Tin Ta, Victoria
Wohlforth, Lewis Colburn); adapt technologies
and uplifting, Digital Twin showcases the Drexel University community as it wrestles with some of the Balkhyoor); and hack technological fabrication to most pressing creative problems of the digital age.
create pro-human futures (Cooper Wright, Emil Polyak, Darren Woodland, Nicole Feller-Johnson).
and uplifting, Digital Twin showcases the Drexel University community as it wrestles with some of the most pressing creative problems of the digital age.
You are the foundation of digital technology.
How do artists use existing digital and physical tools to understand the systems we live under? How can we make room to challenge the design of our technologies and our social norms?
Wohlforth’s projections explore how AI image beauty standards. By feeding Photoshop’s
women of many ages, Wohlforth creates video and still images that reveal what Photoshop’s algorithms have made of human data. This information is often collected to market beauty products and services, cycling back to feed our own increasingly inhuman standards. Here, AI is an absurdist mirror for what humans see as “perfect” features, cementing white Western beauty standards and the commercialization of our images.
Virtual Flesh 2024–2025 Victoria Wohlforth Sourced images, Adobe Photoshop with
Cyberbhavachakra revisits a classic Buddhist painting depicting the cycle of human Ta divides the realms of spiritual existence into human users, cyborgs, the internet, autonomous AI, servile AI, and the lost: each their own way from the poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance. Ta asks: can we pursue transcendence through interactions with technology, or do digital platforms augmenting human experiences merely perpetuate the karmic cycle?
Cyberbhavachakra 2024 Tin Ta Digital drawing, (print details) 6’ x 9’
as though learning to become human. Each begins their dance when triggered by human movement. Their gestures are rehearsed, their awareness of screens throughout the built environment which take in our behavior: machinic and disembodied, capable only of gathering
The Mimic 2025 Rghad Balkhyoor Touchdesigner, monitor, webcam, speaker 48” x 28”
as though learning to become human. Each begins their dance when triggered by human movement. Their gestures are rehearsed, their awareness of screens throughout the built environment which take in our behavior: machinic and disembodied, capable only of gathering
A Haunting Imperative
(Bad News and Brittle Systems) 2023 Lewis Colburn Various woods, aluminum, steel, brass, salvaged copper, emergency blankets, electrical and electronic components 81” x 46” x 36”
Elementalist is a reactive audiovisual collaboration between Jenna Demer Fucetola, a dancer, and digital media designers. Meeting virtually, Demer Fucetola danced while designers translated and reshaped her body natural human and environmental rhythms. Here, dancer and designers mirrored their mediums and created amalgamated twins in a bid to defy distance and connect bodies with the earth’s cycles of harmony and disaster.
Elementalist 2021 Rghad Balkhyoor Performed by Jenna Demer Fucetola Collaboration with Alexus Aiken, Panote Nuchprayoon, Yifu Li Touchdesigner, Isadora, monitor 22” x 38”
Anxious Machine interweaves human bodily anxiety and the breakdown of machinery. Humans design for our own bodies, infusing technologies with our stresses and biases. Melding scavenged natural, electronic and industrial materials with carefully handmade replicas of body parts, Colburn sculpturally diagrams these infusions, revealing the systems which link our precarity and unrest to that of our built physical and digital environment.
Anxious Machine 2024 Lewis Colburn Salvaged pine, basswood, walnut, marble, brass, aluminum, copper, electrical and electronic components, coral, air pump, server rack components, iron gate brace, plumb bob, miniature chain, C-clamps, 87" x 39" x 49"
Materialization began with swordplay recorded on video. Frame by frame, Yang digitally translated his own movement, rendering 3D gestures then creating and collaging 2D “slices” to become the 3D printed Chain Link Drapery and hand-sculpted Wearable Sculpture. Yang revitalizes a traditional art form using information-age tools; in turn, he revitalizes those tools by infusing his own agency-based translation of his body’s data.
Materialization: Chainlink Drapery 2025 Alex Yang Mild steel, 3D printed parts, 18 gauge copper 60” x 1.5” x 60”
Materialization: Wearable Sculpture 2025 Alex Yang Sculpting epoxy, steel armature wire 14” x 6” x 14”
Materialization began with swordplay recorded on video. Frame by frame, Yang digitally translated his own movement, rendering 3D gestures then creating and collaging 2D “slices” to become the 3D printed Chain Link Drapery and hand-sculpted Wearable Sculpture. Yang revitalizes a traditional art form using information-age tools; in turn, he revitalizes those tools by infusing his own agency-based translation of his body’s data.
When working with data, “signal” refers to meaningful information which you’re trying to detect; “noise” refers to anything obscuring that information. As more and more data is collected, the world becomes increasingly “noisy,” giving birth to new industries claiming to usefully reduce noise by sorting data.
Materialization began with swordplay recorded on video. Frame by frame, Yang digitally translated his own movement, rendering 3D gestures then creating and collaging 2D “slices” to become the 3D printed Chain Link Drapery and hand-sculpted Wearable Sculpture. Yang revitalizes a traditional art form using information-age tools; in turn, he revitalizes those tools by infusing his own agency-based translation of his body’s data.
In a bid to make technological tools responsive to human lives, these artists hack, reform and imagine new technologies. They each use these new, self-created tools to establish new ways of producing, thinking, and behaving.
This multi-media exploration beganand withscreen a Wright introduces collage printing vintage feather hat. Polyak, Martin and the into digital modeling and slicing processes, team of Digital Media graduate students used plotting images of alchemical icons onto the 3D Gaussian Splat computation to create an surfacedigital of histwin clay pots. interactive of the hat; the preservation of complex organic forms, To makeinthese vessels, Wright invented and impossible previous rendering software, hand-built a ceramic 3d printer which allowed the artist team to respond materially
accommodates large format pots with visibly complex surface designs. His creation of this The Silent Plume narrates the lifecycle of the technology links tool, fabrication process, lesser bird-of-paradise, ending in its untimely designed outcome, and the viewer together in death at the hands of feather traders. a cycle of curiosity, exploration, and decoding, Threads of Nature Paradise Plundered facilitating theand slowness and thoughtfulness stitch together narrative threads linking he reveres in human thinking.
This multi-media exploration began with a vintage feather hat. Polyak, Martin and the team of Digital Media graduate students used 3D Gaussian Splat computation to create an interactive digital twin of the hat; the preservation of complex organic forms, impossible in previous rendering software, allowed the artist team to respond materially The Silent Plume narrates the lifecycle of the lesser bird-of-paradise, ending in its untimely death at the hands of feather traders.
human desire with bird preservation and exploitation.
Threads of Nature and Paradise Plundered stitch together narrative threads linking human desire with bird preservation and exploitation.
The Aviator and Canopy pay homage to Art Deco and Art Nouveau respectively, exploring the design of feather hats in the context of these art movements which were popular in the Edwardian period.
The Aviator and Canopy pay homage to Art Deco and Art Nouveau respectively, exploring the design of feather hats in the context of these art movements which were popular in the Edwardian period.
By digitally twinning this natural artifact then Vessels for Hyperobjects
By digitally twinning this natural artifact then uplifting artistic “twins,” Plumes and Pixels showcases how the human mind and hand recreate, expand, and reimagine information we are drawn to and how digital technology can support this process, inducing in both the
uplifting artistic “twins,” Plumes and Pixels showcases how the human mind and hand 2024–2025 recreate, expand, and reimagine information Cooper Wright we are drawn to and how digital technology can support this inducing in both the Rhinoceros 3D,process, Grasshopper, 3D printed
ceramic, glazes to x generate 6" 4" – 3’ xnovel 1’ possibilities.
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This multi-media exploration began with a Feller-Johnson’s sculptures hack technological production to ask: vintage feather hat. Polyak, Martin and the what if we already have all the information we need to repurpose and team of Digitaldigital Mediacontent graduate used create? Pushing to students its iterative limit, Feller-Johnson 3D Gaussian Splat computation to create an interactive digital twin of the hat; the preservation complex for organic forms, designed for rigid This is a distinctofdeparture technologies impossible in previous rendering software, allowed the artist to team to respond materially these technologies produce new systems for hand-knitting, a historically feminized craft, Feller-Johnson imagines new applications The Silent Plume narrates the lifecycle of the lesser bird-of-paradise, ending in its untimely death at the hands of feather traders. Threads of Nature and Paradise Plundered stitch together narrative threads linking human desire with bird preservation and exploitation. crepuscular The Aviator and Canopy pay homage to Art
Deco and Art Nouveau respectively, exploring 2025 the design of feather hats in the context of Nicole theseFeller-Johnson art movements which were popular in Mulberry silk organza the Edwardian period. 10’ x 6’
By digitally twinning this natural artifact then uplifting artistic “twins,” Plumes and Pixels showcases how the human mind and hand recreate, expand, and reimagine information we are drawn to and how digital technology can support this process, inducing in both the to generate novel possibilities.
This multi-media exploration began with a vintage feather hat. Polyak, Martin and the team of Digital Media graduate students used 3D Gaussian Splat computation to create an interactive digital twin of the hat; the preservation of complex organic forms, impossible in previous rendering software, allowed the artist team to respond materially The Silent Plume narrates the lifecycle of the lesser bird-of-paradise, ending in its untimely death at the hands of feather traders. Threads of Nature and Paradise Plundered stitch together narrative threads linking human desire with bird preservation and exploitation. The Aviator and Canopy pay homage to Art Deco and Art Nouveau respectively, exploring the design of feather hats in the context of these art movements which were popular in the Edwardian period. By digitally twinning this natural artifact then uplifting artistic “twins,” Plumes and Pixels showcases how the human mind and hand recreate, expand, and reimagine information we are drawn to and how digital technology can support this process, inducing in both the to generate novel possibilities.
The Silent Plume This multi-media exploration began with a vintage feather hat. Polyak, Martin and the 2024 Rghad teamBalkhyoor of Digital Media graduate students used Digital animation Splat computation to create an 3D Gaussian interactive digital twin of the hat; the The Aviator preservation of complex organic forms, impossible in previous rendering software, 2024 allowed the artist team to respond materially Darren Woodland Digital print on art paper 23” x 13”
The Silent Plume narrates the lifecycle of the Canopy lesser bird-of-paradise, ending in its untimely death at the hands of feather traders. 2024 Darren Woodland Threads of Nature and Paradise Plundered Digital print on art paper 23”stitch x 13” together narrative threads linking
human desire with bird preservation and Threads of Nature exploitation.
2024 The Aviator and Canopy pay homage to Art Rghad Balkhyoor Deco and Art Nouveau respectively, exploring Nuno felting the design of feather hats in the context of 40"x28"
these art movements which were popular in Paradise Plundered the Edwardian period.
By digitally twinning this natural artifact then 2024 Rghad Balkhyoor uplifting artistic “twins,” Plumes and Pixels Nuno felting showcases how the human mind and hand 40"x28"
recreate, expand, and reimagine information we are drawn to and how digital technology Plumes and Pixels: support this process, inducing in both the 3Dcan Gaussian Splat 2024 to generate novel possibilities. Emil Polyak 3D Gaussian Splat, interactive monitor
What do you want to learn about the digital worlds you This multi-media exploration began with a inhabit? vintage feather hat. Polyak, Martin and the team of Digital Media graduate students used beside your digital twin? 3D Gaussian Splat computation to create an interactive digital twin of the hat; the preservation of complex organic forms, impossible in previous rendering software, allowed the artist team to respond materially The Silent Plume narrates the lifecycle of the lesser bird-of-paradise, ending in its untimely death at the hands of feather traders. Threads of Nature and Paradise Plundered stitch together narrative threads linking human desire with bird preservation and exploitation. The Aviator and Canopy pay homage to Art Deco and Art Nouveau respectively, exploring the design of feather hats in the context of these art movements which were popular in the Edwardian period. By digitally twinning this natural artifact then uplifting artistic “twins,” Plumes and Pixels showcases how the human mind and hand recreate, expand, and reimagine information we are drawn to and how digital technology can support this process, inducing in both the to generate novel possibilities.