Interview 27 // cari ann shim sham

Hello! Today is Monday, September 32,024, and my name is Colin Goldberg. And I'm here with the artist, Carrie Ann Shimsham. Who is going to be curating a an upcoming exhibition? Which is going to be done in collaboration with the Techspressionist community. And I'll just hand it off to Carrie Ann, if you want to tell us a little bit about the show and about your museum and you know. Kind of. However, you want to frame it.

Sure. Thank you, Colin. Thanks for hosting us, and we are we myself and Joey Zaza, who co-founded the museum together in 2020. We're into our 4th year. And we are very excited to be collaborating with the Techspressionist for this upcoming exhibition. It's our 11th exhibition. We are a digital online museum that was founded in the times of lockdown, in the pandemic, when artists had literally no place to put their work because everything was being cancelled or postponed.

cari ann shim sham

And it was the catalyst of the Whitney biennial, announcing that they would postpone by a year. That led us to say, Hey, let's just do it, anyways, let's do our own biennial. And so we Founded Mauna. We created the Museum of wild and newfangled art. And we had an opening show to launch the museum, and then the very next show was the biennial. And that was a very Prolific and successful exhibition. And that Propelled us into this work of online digital archival. And. We eventually stumbled into Web 3 and started working with blockchain and have done numerous exhibitions in tandem, I would say, like in Community with Web 3 we exhibit on our site, which is the online museum, and we also exhibit on the blockchain.

cari ann shim sham

And now we are in partnership with Loop Art Critique, and we're also exhibiting in the metaverse. So that's really exciting to have our own mana room with The Loop Art Critique, which is Ariel Robbins, and also the MUD Foundation Supporting that. So we also came upon the Techspressionists through some of the artists being in our exhibition. So Tommy Mintz showed up in our 1st biennial. 4 years ago, and Renata showed up. We found Renata actually on the blockchain. Joey found Renata.

cari ann shim sham

And so we were slowly like Accumulating these Techspressionist artists. And we're like, What is this? So we started looking into it, and Joey watched all the salons.

Amazing.

Yes, and started attending them. And we were thinking about what our next exhibition would be. And we're like, Hey, you know. Why don't we? Why don't we work with the Techspressionists and create A partnership and also Onboard, this community, some of which are already on the blockchain, but really to onboard them as a group and say, let's look at these artists, and what they're doing, because what the Techspressionist are doing is very similar to what we're doing in The ways of community building and gathering people from all around the world through the online.

cari ann shim sham

You know. Infrastructure of the web.

Awesome, very cool, very cool. Yeah, I think there's a lot of synergy. You know, between what you guys are doing and what you know, the Techspressionist community is doing. I think it's really interesting. The different approaches. You know. How mauna you know. And you guys, personally, I believe, kind of consciously stay away from social media and like, that's kind of the been the medium where I initially started locating the artist to come into the group. So it's like 2 different angles. But like, you know, Tommy and Renata like were people that came in through one door on your side and another door on my side. And you know, I remember Tommy actually talking about you guys and minting with you and other stuff like that quite a while back. And I was like.

Colin Goldberg

Oh, that sounds interesting, you know. Just kinda the name of it and everything like that. So, Yeah, very cool. And that's going to be opening on October 3.rd Is that correct? The date.

Yeah, yeah.

Coming up very quickly. And that's going to be actually happening at our upcoming salon. So it'll be a live launch and exhibition opening which is really exciting. And you know, and it was good to see you in Brooklyn a little while back. And just to, you know, have you and Joey participate in the show there? So yeah, it's really cool. So I just wanted to, you know, open up with that just because we're, you know, coming into this show very soon. And this, I think, is gonna be of interest to the participants and also the larger community just to know, get to know you guys. I believe Renata is gonna be interviewing Joey as well. So you know. I think the audience into expressionism, or people who are just watching.

Colin Goldberg

Some of our content, you know, will benefit from getting to know each of you as individual artists as well. So that being said. I'm gonna kind of dive into this interview format, which was actually created by Roz Dimon. Back in 20.

2021.

Yeah, absolutely and you know, I think it's served us very well. And actually, I told her about this book that my daughter's been reading, and called The Wild Robot, and she got a kick out of that, because the central character is a robot named Roz. We actually just saw the movie yesterday, actually, my daughter and I, which was really good. All about a robot stranded on an island, and Robot got to know all the animals, and influenced by them. Very cute. But also I feel like it's kind of a sign of the times, you know, in terms of what's going on in our society in general so really interesting. But at any rate, that's a sidebar, so we'll open up.

Down. I'm gonna get the book.

Yeah, it's amazing. Actually, it's really cool. Her entire school district actually is reading the book. All the different, you know, grade levels, elementary elementary through middle school. And yeah, really, there's a whole series of them. So it's really good.

Just see the word wild being used so widely. It's.

Yeah, that's funny. Actually, I didn't even think about that. But yeah, it's you know. That's true. Yep, the wild robot. And you know, the robot kind of identified in that way because of its connection or her connection. I know the robot has a gender, but she, I think, did identify in that way, and identifying with these animals, though you know and how the robot learned to Tap into sort of an emotional you know center, which is different from how she was programmed. And I think that you know all of this kind of relates in a roundabout way to you know what we're doing in terms of Techspressionism and what you guys are doing. So it's kind of cool.

Colin Goldberg

It's all part of the Zeitgeist. I guess you know of. You know how these robots or bots or AI based entities are starting to interact with humans and humanity. And it's, you know, an ever evolving tale. So yeah. So why don't you? Tell us a little bit about your background, such as where you're born where you live in practice now, and maybe some of your cultural influences.

So this one, I'm just gonna kind of come at this from some different places. I'm from the seventies. I. Am from a legacy of colonization. And I am From a family that's living on stolen land. And I am. Coming from The ancestry of French Huguenots, which were fleeing from being persecuted in France. So my family was coming over here in the 16 hundreds, and started in Salem and then move their way up into The North Landing, in a small town in Pennsylvania, called Northeast.

cari ann shim sham

It's near Erie, on the lake. And our farmers. So I come from a family of farming. And some of them are still farming. Actually, my uncle is today harvesting grapes for Welch's and also for some local wineries and I come from the nineties in Los Angeles. Performing performance, art in the underground art scene that was happening there. And I come from burning man. I come from the Playa from Black Rock City. Having spent 9 burns out there over a period of 20 years. And now I'm coming from New York City and From the Lenape Bay lands and the Manhat peoples.

cari ann shim sham

And I'm. Really coming from a place of understanding where I'm coming from. And really working on that. And really going deep into that kind of question. Whereabouts, you know. And I was actually born in Delaware, which kind of has nothing to do with any of that. And relocated to California at a very young age. And when I returned to New York I realized that I am from the east coast. I really am. So. That's kind of a long way around. Yeah.

Cool, cool. Yeah, really interesting. Answer to that question. I don't. I don't think I've ever had an interview where it was so heavily based in sort of social deconstruction, so to speak, or however, you'd want to call it, but very interesting.

Same getting me.

Well, you know, I mean it's what keeps things interesting. And you know and also I wanted to say, you know, it's nice to have you involved in the group in the community in that way, and that, you know. I've always thought of expressionism as something that's based on self identification. You know, it's an idea. I think ultimately, that's the greater Umbrella that you know. Has the community under it, and all the activities. And if people identify with this idea of technology being used in sort of an emotive way or connecting with, you know, personal?

Colin Goldberg

I guess you know, using technology in a personal way, I think that's really interesting. And I, you know, I looked a little bit at your background in terms of your being involved with dance and other art forms, you know, in addition to visual art and so segueing into that, you know the second part of this question is cultural influences. Do you have any specific cultural influences that you'd like to talk about?

Hmm! Cultural influences, I mean, I come from like a family of Feelers and seers and knowers. So a lot of. Hmm! Different ways of.

cari ann shim sham

Being in relationship with. Spirit world, I would say. And also coming from A culture of nature, nature worshiping and like being in touch with the land, and Cycles and seasons and Weather weather's like really important. In my cultural. Lineage and then there's also like a lot of history, and like mystery, I would say mystery and hidden things, also that our I think a bit of an influence that have led me to go into deeper investigations of like The family system and legacy. And. That kind of like. Yearning for ritual. Yeah.

cari ann shim sham

Yearning for ritual and then bringing ritual back into practice.

cari ann shim sham

And food Food's been a very important influential part of my family and the culture that I'm the cultures that I'm coming from really big on food. Right on.

Well, I could identify with that. So what made you become an artist? Or when did you know this is what you wanted to do?

I mean becoming so becoming like I became from my parents. They helped me to become and I think that. They created a space that allowed for creativity. So I would just honor them in that my dad was always like blasting music. I grew up in a house full of music and my mom was always dancing Jitterbug in the kitchen, and my dad, I grew up on the racetracks of Watkins Glen, watching the race cars go by really loud. And my dad would be photographing them.

cari ann shim sham

And then. When we weren't at The Glen, we were like sitting in front of a pull down screen, watching the slide, the slides on the slide projector of the images. So I think that really created my understanding of framing. And. Yeah, composition. And my mom was at home with me, for I think the 1st 11 to 12 years of my life. So there was always a lot of. Creativity happening at home. So we were always working on projects together, making things, and she was always making things. My Dad was always making things, too, like woodwork. And he made a lot of things for me as I was growing up so just in just like bearing witness to the creativity of my parents. I think, really. Initiated it,

And at what point do you think you, or did you, at some point decide? You know this is what I want to do like, you know this sort of stereotypical. Oh, when did you know? When did you declare your major, or whatever like it was there like an Aha! Moment when you were like you know what like. I think I want to do this.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think I wanna like point out the moment of when I started saying, I am an artist, because that was like a really pivotal.

cari ann shim sham

Moment. And it was hard. It was really hard at 1st to just be able to say, I am an artist. And to move away from the things that I had been studying, because I started studying music at a young age piano at like 8, I think. And French Horn all through high school and French Horn. Got me a scholarship into college at Ucla to be a music major. And I'm also dancing from 12. So studying Tap, belly, jazz techniques. So all of that, like studying. Accumulating.

cari ann shim sham

I'm a I'm a French horn player. I'm a I'm a I'm a musician. I'm a dancer and then going into. College. And just like I hated the music program and I left it. And I moved over to the world arts and cultures. Slash dance program. I wanted to go to school for dance, my dad said, why don't you do music instead? It's better like he thought that was like a better career. Option for me. And it was like a guaranteed way of getting a scholarship. So that's what I did. And then I like threw it all out the window and went to dance and it wasn't until. Like graduating From my undergrad degree at Ucla that I was getting this question of like, What do you do? And I would say I'm a dancer. And it was the nineties. So everybody thought I was a stripper, and so I had to change that answer. So it's like, What do you do? I'm a choreographer.

cari ann shim sham

Oh, like what is that? I don't understand, and that sounds what. And so then it finally got into like, what do you do? And it's like, I'm an artist. And then what kind of art, do you do? And then you have this long list of things that you have to say you do. And then in 20 13, I think I read the artist's way, and I started doing all of that work. And I Landed on this answer of I'm a wild artist, and that's when I started using that and then people would not ask me any questions. And I was like I finally found it like.

cari ann shim sham

I'm aware.

Okay. Oh.

Colin Goldberg

Nice.

Yeah, but it was really hard to like. I don't know about you like when you 1st start saying I am an artist like it's like so vulnerable. It's such a. And the things people say to you, you know, just like having a to receive all of these different Perceptions of what that means.

Right. Sure, I mean, I kind of feel like for me. I always kind of identified in that way, and that was always something that I did From being a kid on, and I never stopped. But there definitely was a point, and I think it was an undergrad. You know where I kind of decided. You know what? This is, what I'm gonna do like, you know, and so much of how we formulate our Dan. Our identities, I think, is based on that. You know. What do we actually do to earn a living? Or you know, what do we do when we get up every day, you know. And it was actually with working. It was through working with another one of the artists in the community. Actually, one of the artists who helped formulate the group was in the 1st salon, Steve Miller.

Colin Goldberg

And you know I saw what he was doing in the studio. I was a teenager, an undergrad. And I was like, Huh! This is something that people do you know, I never actually encountered anyone who was a practicing artist before that other than you know. With my art professors, my painting professors. But they were academics primarily. You know what I mean. So to come into a studio. See that this was. You know, somebody's life, how they function day in and day out, and that only a small percentage of it really was involved in the making of the work. There was so much else around it to support that life, studio, practice everything. So it's a real eye opener.

Colin Goldberg

So yeah, you know. And so kind of coming back into influences. You know. Besides, the sort of cultural influences do you have any specific artistic influences that you'd like to speak to.

Yeah, I'd like to bring Frida Kahlo into the room. I was living in San Diego. From like around 8 years old through high school. Living in Poway, actually, which is like part of San Diego County, so close to the border and going to Mexico a lot and. The vibrancy of the art in Mexico was very attractive to me. The use of color. Actually, that's an Aha moment for me right now is like. That's probably where the color is coming from. Cause I use a lot of color in my work.

cari ann shim sham

It's probably from that initial kind of Flourish, of being exposed to Mexico and its art and its artists at such a young age. And Frida I mean everywhere I looked. It was Frida. And I was like, who is this woman? And Of course, like being a female, I was attracted to that because I wasn't really seeing it otherwise, and I loved the self-portraiture. And I looked into her story, and it was just so captivating. And she became more than just an artist to me just like a. A pivotal figure of resilience and persistence and tenacity, and Strength and divine femininity and style and fashion, and just like so much so. Yeah, definitely free to.

cari ann shim sham

And also Dolly. My best friend. Her parents had arts on the art on the wall, and then had these coffee table books. And one of them was Dolly, and I would always look at that book and just loved the images in there. And really grew up with that appreciation of surrealism and Dolly. And then and then in my forties it all fell apart. When I read the black dahlia and realized,. Yeah, it took. It took me 40 years to realize that the surrealists were actually very violent towards women, and the whole movement was based around this like dissection of the female body and that woke me up in this new way. And that's where that piece came from the man ray piece that was exhibited at the Kingsborough Art Museum.

cari ann shim sham

I just wanted to like flip it, and look at like what is female gaze. And what does it mean to look at a male body from a female perspective? And what if I do this like dissecting thing? As a conversation with Manry of, like. You know, cutting things apart and dismembering and disfiguring, and so that was a real big moment for me, where I just kind of like everything. The floor fell out from underneath me. With that influence. And yet I'm still like, I would say, heavily influenced by surrealism.

cari ann shim sham

Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting, how? You know, work changes. As we get older and we look at the things that really used to Captivate us. And then coming back, you know, I was definitely Yeah. Surrealism was a huge influence on me, as well, you know, and I think that. You know it. It still is, to some degree, although I kind of put it down. But then I you know I can't help but picking it up just to look at the you know the quality of how well the these imaginary scenarios were executed, you know, for better or worse in terms of if you wanna dissect them psychologically and pick them apart. That's a whole other story. But just the painting aspect of it, I think is hard to deny. So

And so surprising. When I saw my 1st dolly in person, I was shocked at the scale of it.

No.

Because I was looking at these coffee books. And the images were much larger than the actual paintings. I was like, oh, my gosh! It's so small. So that was stunning.

Yeah, it's I, I feel the same way. You know, looking at looking, at his work or a lot of the surrealist, work, you know, you just get this feeling that they're just very large scale pieces until you see it in person. And I had the opposite effect. When I saw my 1st pollock at Moma in person, where you know, in reproduction, I'm like, alright, I mean, I get it. He drips some paint, you know, but then it's like.

Yeah, yeah.

You're in front of it, and to me it was just like, you know. Just falling into the piece. You know, this whole other aspect of dimensionality when something is of scale like that. So yeah, it's interesting to see something physically versus in reproduction, for sure.

Yeah.

So you know, before we look at your work. Can you tell us a little bit about your process? I know you work in a bunch of different modalities. So if you think there's anything in particular that cuts across them, or any certain, you know, body of work that you'd like to discuss in particular.

Yeah. I would say that The work comes from my body and that my body is the source. The body acts as a conduit for the work to come through. And that my ideas or my concepts come generally from Dreams or visions.

cari ann shim sham

And. I'm always like in the act of like making things move. I would say. Movement is very at the heart center Of the work. And my practice has definitely like, really developed over the years, and is now like become something quite Profound. I would say it's taken a while to really like develop the practice, and to even like be aware of it and understand it. And now it's. A lot about taking an image and setting it up and then investigating it from the inside through improvisation.

cari ann shim sham

And. Through the use of the morphic field and.

cari ann shim sham

Generativity, I would say

Can you speak about this the morphic field? And I'm not super familiar with that term. So.

Yeah, the morphic field is a scientific term. And it is the idea that everybody has this energy that's coming out from the body, and when bodies gather in a group they share these energies. So it creates this Field. And it can also be thought of as like collective memory. Morphic resonance. And it's a way of information that's being shared in a nonverbal way. For example. If you were to be in a room of people taking a test, and you were to wait until, like most of the room, had completed half of the test and you started. Then you would have more correct answers.

cari ann shim sham

Based on the field of like this shared knowing. And this field can be used in a myriad of ways, and it's used by animals for passing information. It's used by humans for passing information. And it's also used in. Specific kinds of therapy family and systemic constellation therapies is the field which is where I got introduced to it and realize that I've been working with a field in my dance practice for quite a long time. And yeah, it's just this, like divine state of knowing and understanding. Beyond yourself.

cari ann shim sham

Through a shared collective field of memory and systems.

Really interesting. Yeah, I'd heard something similar about that. I think it was dealing with like the New York Times crossword puzzle, where, like, once it came out it was more easily solved, or something like that, like. You know, the knowledge was out there. And it's easier for people to access. Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, there's definitely something to it. And I think that there's plenty of things that have a valid scientific explanation. It's just that humans haven't really been able to Articulate it yet, you know, and I think a lot of times it gets chalked up to sort of hocus pocus, or whatever you want to call it. But ultimately, you know.

Colin Goldberg

Neurons are firing. Electrical impulses are happening. And it's all really measurable, you know, through science. So, yeah, I think that's really interesting, you know, and it crosses over all sorts of different fields of study. So you know, and also made me when you were talking. It made me think about the salons where. You know, there's this group of people all like, you know, experiencing something in real time responding to somebody sharing about their work.

Colin Goldberg

And there's always unexpected things that happen. But it's interesting to capture. You know. You know, an experience that's shared, you know, amongst a whole bunch of different people, and then to be able to look back at it, you know. It. It's, you know, definitely something that wouldn't be wouldn't be possible without something like zoom, you know, like.

20 years.

Ago. You couldn't really have that or even like this, you know, video conferencing in the sense. But having 20 or 30 people involved. I think it really makes it you know. Ripe for surprises and possibilities. So.

Very.

So do you want to share your screen? And you know, show us some of your work? Maybe you could show us a little bit, or speak to how your work has evolved, artistically and technically, or you know, you could. However, you want to approach it. Really, it's kind of up to you.

Okay?

cari ann shim sham

Yes. So I'll start with my artist statement. My art acts as a window to the soul, a mirror for reflection, a warm refuge for meditation. A generator for embodiment. And a sacred space for healing. My body acts as a conduit, a medium for magic and message to travel through. My practice is generative, embodied soul work. There's power in the question. There's liberation and enjoying the experiment. There is love in the soul. There's magic in the movement.

cari ann shim sham

I am here to move things. And this is Girl. It's A gif. And it's me running through a field in New Hampshire A couple summers ago. Well. They're hunting mushrooms. And I work with gifs as a way of archiving moments. And.

cari ann shim sham

I will take us to my website front page. And I wanted to start with body landscapes. Which is a generative project. It was released originally on fx hash on December 20, second, 2023 it also has an article attached to it that I wrote on fx hash. And it is a self-portrait project. That came to me from a dream. And. It's Capturing states, emotional states Of experiencing Cancer. During the pandemic I was diagnosed with breast cancer on March 15, th the day that New York City shut down.

cari ann shim sham

So this was a way of processing that experience several years later. And it started as this generative art project, and then moved into gifs that I created that are on. It was exhibited also with The Loop Art Critique, and was actually built in Loop Art Critique and has an Xr element to it. This room that I created for the exhibit. With the bodies. And that's where the gifs showed up. I created these flashing gifs. This is an image from inside The Xr space. That's me and my avatar. And then those are the gifs. They're actually flashing, and you can fly through the space. And there's these like layers of these bodies, and my voice is singing inside there.

cari ann shim sham

So it turned into these gifs, which then here's 1 of them which then I took these gifs and Repurpose them into a film which was. Shown At actually, that was the premiere at Kingsborough Art Museum. So I created this short film also titled body landscapes. And it's animated from these gifs. And so the project just keeps growing and growing and growing, and it's been a really A wild ride, I would say. That. I then turned them into glds some of the gifs.

cari ann shim sham

So it's kind of gone in all directions. And it's just something that I continue to explore. Yeah, let me click out of this. And the film has. Been a finalist for the New York Animation film awards. So that's really exciting and also has screened at the San Suu Kyi Film Festival and the San Francisco Dance Film Festival so far as well as being in the Kingsborough Art Museum Exhibition of Hello, Brooklyn to expressionism. So that's been really exciting to see it go all over the place. So that's like a project that's current. And ongoing, I would say.

cari ann shim sham

I do work in generative AI I also want to talk about dance prompts. This is A participatory artificial intelligence, generative dance project to develop an AI choreographer biased towards inclusive and accessible movement. And. This actually came out of the. AI curator that Joey and I created for Mauna for the show. This show is curated by a machine we created with ivy. Another artist. Another mount artist. We, the 3 of us, created this AI neural network model that could rank and sort images still images, and we used it to curate a show. And so I was thinking, well, I want to create an AI Choreographer that could learn my body, my movements, and then spit out a solo for me to do, because I was at the time I was like I need to do solo and then that developed more into how can we create this. AI that would give prompts so that anybody could move because my collaborators, Carson and Demetrius and I are really into The liberation of dance. So like tearing out the technique and tearing out all of the things that make people think that they're not dancers.

cari ann shim sham

And to reintroduce in a way where you can give prompts that would allow any person the Desire to move and to be moved. And so we created this whole experience that we showed last year in February at Columbia, Barnard in the movement lab. And these are images from the area that we set up. This is the playground. There are some rotating projections on the floor. There's a whiteboard. There's the we did an exquisite corpse with the audience together.

cari ann shim sham

And that was one of the devices we were using. We had this welcome mat. Place your feet, take a moment activate and release so we had these like these stages of participation. When you 1st enter, you would answer these questions, what makes you move? What gets in the way, and you just throw it in the trash. And these prompts. What makes you move? Came back to the. To the playground later in the experience. And then here's us in the lab over the summer. We were just Continuing to research this and coming up with new prompts, mirrors and different video bars being projected through the space. Another whiteboard you'll see there. So this one is continuing to develop, and is a very long term project.

cari ann shim sham

And the next phase will be creating prompt like training the neural network. With all of these prompts that we generate through these workshops. Shimmer is my inflatable project. They are empathy generators. And there's a very large one. And then there's smaller ones. And the smaller ones have been getting a lot of attention lately, because they're just easier to move around. And you can get inside of them. And we take them to places in New York City where people can interact with them. Kids really love them.

cari ann shim sham

And they also are exhibiting in different places. This is again at the Kingsborough Art Museum. And the Techspressionism exhibit by Tommy, curated by Tommy Mintz and others. This is at every woman biennial in la Mama Gallery in the Village. And you can see them moving. Get an idea of them moving. This is them lit up At night with some nice fiber optic lighting underneath them. They're really gorgeous. They're really fun. That's Carson, one of my collaborators.

cari ann shim sham

And the experience of being inside of them is the what is generating this empathy of being inside of something that is not square. Being inside of a color being washed by color. That's Demetrius, my other collaborator. Demetrius Cheryl Lambus. Having that sort of like return to the womb experience and also being inside of something where you're not seen, and you are of something else. So you're becoming this thing. So it's kind of like a self forgetfulness or a loss of ego that's happening that really opens up the heart.

cari ann shim sham

This is the larger one. It is very big. It's 30 feet in diameter, and then the tentacles go out 50 feet. And. Yeah, that one. Here's my team for the bigger one.

Wow!

Yeah, that one has a sound floor, an interactive sound floor that you can see the pieces there. It's 12 tone sound floor and when you step on the individual. Panels, it triggers a note. And right now it's programmed for a 12 tone scale. So that when you're inside of the creature you can make it sing. Which is where the name came from. Shimmer, the singing sea anemone. And the high, deep, and wide like installation is this big anemone surrounded by the smaller anemones.

cari ann shim sham

And this experience that people can witness that is like A passage of day to night to day cycling and the anemone is growing and deflating. Inflating. People can go inside. The small anemones are like dancing. This ballet and other things are happening. And because of the pandemic we were like building, building building, and then the pandemic hit, and this all kind of like ground to a halt. And so now the time is coming back where we're looking for spaces to exhibit this larger Beast of an anemone. It does need a very large space. So it's been difficult to find The right location, but we're still looking so anybody wants to exhibit a very large an enemy. And I think I want to get to some of the pictures. My collaborator who we built together is Mary Hale. I just want to throw that name out there. We! This is what we did during the pandemic, when we couldn't be in person together or be inside of the inflatable.

cari ann shim sham

We created this underwater. VR. 3, 60 experience to just keep working on the project, and that was really satisfying. And that was Mary Hale and myself and Zavi, which was our builder in unreal so we had a really good time doing that. So that's shimmer.

cari ann shim sham

I have a lot of like ongoing long term projects, you know. This is my newest piece that I'm working on. I'll come back to it. But I want to talk about my generative dance, and I want to talk about my generative art. And the morphic field. So. Warning sirens is a work that I made in 2019. And this is a gif that I made from the work Of the circling section that has been archived on the Tezos blockchain as a way of thinking about, how do you archive performance especially dance? It's so fleeting, it happens one or 2 nights, and then it's over.

cari ann shim sham

And all you have is like a video or some photographs. And then. You never get to like touch it again. Really? So and then those videos live somewhere that, like only a couple of people can access. So how do you? How do you take something and have the essence of what it was? To archive it. And so I was thinking, like these little pieces of the dance that really capture the moment. Turning it into this like forever looping thing, and then putting it on the on the blockchain, and saying, this happened at this time, and here's the information, and it's not for sale, and this is not for sale. This is this is to archive and say, this happened.

cari ann shim sham

And this was like the feeling of it, right? Because, like, when you look At a video of dance. It's just like so flat compared to being in the space and actually experiencing the field of the dance, the morphic field. So this was a piece called Warning Sirens. And I created this fiber optic veil that the piece happened. Inside of the dancers were blindfolded in a circle. It was all women and. Starting with this investigation of beckoning, conjuring, and warning.

cari ann shim sham

This was in 2019 A we're at the time of Trump being in the Presidency and dealing with you know all of those things of what it means to be a female. What are you at war with? We are working with these questions, answering these questions. Which I want to go up to? What are you at war with? What are you fighting for? When will you open your eyes, will you be ready when the sirens call? So this to me was kind of the beginning of my work as a generative Artist making A dance that was built on an experimental score.

cari ann shim sham

So it's always different every time. And. These I do want to say, these images. Most of them are taken by Joey Zaza From Malna.

cari ann shim sham

And the sound score I created, and it was just very like loud and Blooming and ominous and. Profound A sound, square rehearsal for the dance. So this stance. Was in hindsight, using the morphic field to generate the movement as I had them blindfolded. They were generating these moves of beckoning and conjuring without seeing each other, and it was really interesting to see what crossed over in the in the gestures. This is my other generative work, gorgeous creatures, a task based experimental score for creating and holding sacred space.

cari ann shim sham

It's a generative dance every time it's performed. It's different. And this again, using these task based. Almost, it's like an algorithm, right? So you're setting up these different tasks that are happening. And this is another gif that was again minted to the blockchain to archive the flocking section Of the dance. Also, here we have flying. I really like this one. This one is also on the tezos blockchain and shrouds. This is a shroud moment from the work.

cari ann shim sham

And this work also was using nfts. So the images that you're seeing on the shroud are from a project called Strange Loop and they were acting, they were projected from above, and acting as this like Cyber layer of magic. This is what we're looking at now. The article that I wrote about this work. It's minted onto the blockchain on fx hash and goes into the development of the work. And the score itself is here in this article Yeah. Some other images from The work, and that's Carson and Demetrius on the side there. We also developed this piece together.

cari ann shim sham

There might my long-term collaborators. All right. So this takes us into a little bit, into some generative art, because I came to New York in 2015 and started learning coding creative coding through itp and started making work generative work. And that definitely impacts like how I make everything now, thinking about code and creative coding and algorithms and. What it means to make something that is ever changing and ongoing generative. This is my project window which I so love is very minimalist, and it's From the perspective of like an abstract window.

cari ann shim sham

And some of these are nighttime Nature, and some of these are daytime. Some of these are like city scapes, and others are more like country scapes, and wanting to create like a larger installation of these, where you see all of them together on the wall, and they're shifting between the black backgrounds and the white backgrounds. With different sound. Scores of city or Crickets in the in the country. You know that kind of Design.

cari ann shim sham

So that's a little bit of my generative art as well as body landscapes which leads me to this project now called Hovering, that I'm setting on the students at Nyu. And it's about this time we're in now. This like feeling of Hovering and. Not being able to land. But we're in this like constant state of like. Suspension and. And what does it mean to be held. And what does it mean to be holding? And it's about the here and the there and the in between.

cari ann shim sham

And this one again is working with the morphic field in a more practice based way of setting up these images. This is one of the images and then letting an improvisation happen inside of that image. And yeah, this is something that happened From one of the improvisations where we found a new image, you know. So this is a really exciting. Progress for me in my practice is to actually understand now what I'm working with, and then to go further into that investigation of how I can use it as a resource, using the morphic field to embody movement and use it as a practice to develop a generative dance.

cari ann shim sham

So that's what I'm working on right now. I'm also working on. An Xr album with Joey Zaza and I can't show any of the imagery from that yet, because it's just not quite there. But this is my website. You can kind of go there and see everything I'm doing. I'm working in AI, I'm working in generative AI and also film performance, Mauna, all kinds of stuff. So Yeah, video art, I do a lot of video artistry for other people. I today, I wanted to like, really stay focused on my own work. But I do work for other people. And I do create video art for large scale, Proscenium work for David Rousseff.

cari ann shim sham

And for my collaborator, Emily Beatty, I'm a cinematographer. I shoot films for directors like Marta Renzi. I work collaboratively with opera on top. And we made a VR project. That's a an opera murder project. I do music videos. And Yeah, I got to be the 1st video artist to redesign the Rauschenberg Shiner piece for Tricia Brown's set and reset. So yeah, that's what I do. I do lots of stuff for lots of people. But now I'm really focusing on my own work and on exhibiting, I'm really focused on exhibiting. So if anyone wants to exhibit.

cari ann shim sham

Call me.

Awesome. Thank you so much. That was you know, very, a very broad Cross section, and I think it's interesting how you know, you work across so many different Types of media including performance. And you know, sculpture. And the way that technology sort of is woven in, you know, across these different types of practice. That's actually something that you know. Kind of brought me to this idea of text. Bretionism, to be honest. Is that even though I use computers in my work quite a bit. I still primarily consider a lot of what I do to be painting, although not all of it, you know, and it just never sat well with me to think of that as digital art, even though as soon as people heard that there were computers involved, they said, Well, that's digital art. And I thought, No, it's not, you know. And so I had to come up with this sort of way to talk about it. And I think that you know. Like, you know, work that's sculptural or performance based. That incorporates technology into it.

Colin Goldberg

Is really interesting, you know. And it shows how. Technology is just part of our Lives and culture and society now, and it's not this thing where the art has to be defined in that way, you know. And it just is. It's an aspect of living in the 21st century. So like it's hard to not have it seep into almost everything that we do, creatively or artistically, in a lot of ways, you know, even if it's At a subconscious level or actively trying to be avoided. So Yeah, it's very cool. And then so I mean, that kind of brings us into our next question, which is, what interests you about expressionism.

Yeah, I wanna say that Marshall Mcluhan. Talks about defining technology as the extension of man. The extension of the body Of human. So this is technology, right? And that we're a little bit. Confused right now by thinking like. This is technology. So you know. It's all technology dance is technology. Language is technology like all of these things that we've created, that are all around us. It's all technologies. And so there's these old systems that were. We're almost like losing track of the idea that it is something that we've created. And we rely upon in that.

cari ann shim sham

It is technology. And then there's these new systems that we're only thinking of as technology and so just to bring that back to Techspressionism. That what I appreciate the most is that it's looking at the emotion Of expression through.

cari ann shim sham

Technology. That it's centered on embodiment that is centered on this human experience. And then that's getting translated through whatever thing is the best thing to translate for the concept. I really appreciate that. In the definition of it that has always attracted me is just like having that word in there of emotion. Because it's so integral to our experience and to what Art is. If you can even define what art is you know. Expressing an experience expressing an emotion somehow, you know, so that always really has been at the heart of it for me as well as the inclusivity of it.

cari ann shim sham

The ability to self. Proclaim yourself to self, identify yourself as a Techspressionism, and I have recently dropped my wild artist shtick, and I've like moved over to Techspressionists, and that kind of feels really exciting for me to be like, oh, I'm like moving on like I'm moving into this new. A way of like Calling myself identifying myself. And that also feels really liberating to step out of this way I've been Identifying for so long, and to step into this new way of identifying. And as I step into that, it's this rich community Of artists that I step into, and that is the final thing that I'm very attracted to is just the strong community of people who are showing up and to our Nurturing each other, and who are creating time and space in an otherwise like hectic, busy, chaotic world, where people don't have time and space for anything.

cari ann shim sham

People are making time and space for each other and for this practice and for this Community, and that is profound. And I'm really happy to be part of it.

Well, thank you. You know it's always interesting to me how different artists, you know. Relate to this idea. And. You know, I think it's a very personal. Definition, you know. And I think you know, expressionism. Is really the foundation of it, you know, and. One of the artists. I think it was Darcy Gerbarg. Talked about it, mentioned it, as you know, Expressionism for the 21st century. And I think that's a very Apt way of thinking about kind of the.

Colin Goldberg

You know. The idea is that it's really just an extension of expressionism in reality to me, anyway, that the technology component just happens to be a reflection of the times we live in, you know. And. You know I was. I was talking talking about this to someone recently. How. Expressionism Differs from impressionism, you know, and how it's an internal. It's a representation of an internal state, you know, versus A representation of external reality. And that was actually part of the definition of expressionism From the Oxford Dictionary that we kind of scrapped when, when Helen Harrison, myself, Patrick Lichty and Steve Miller and Oz Van Rosen, we kind of gathered together for this 1st salon and talked about. You know the definition and the previous definition was an artistic style in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the outside world or external reality. I don't know exactly, and Helen actually made the case for dropping the word style and appro and replacing it with the word approach which I think is very important when you think about surrealism and how it's sort of united stylistically versus, you know, in any other way. Really, when you think about the work, it's an aesthetic, it's a certain way of representation.

Colin Goldberg

And then dropping also this rather than Impressions of the outside world, because in the end, you know, there's plenty of people working in a Techspressionist way, who are working Figuratively. Or you know, there's this sort of very wide wide range of styles. And it would be a mistake, I think, to define it as a style it would be very limiting, and produce something that's short lived to me. I mean, I don't want to this any particular thing, but to me the idea of glitch art right? I think about that as a style like I think of it, and I picture with the work, and I could pick it out. You know what I mean in a feed? Maybe not. You know what I mean, but what I perceive of as glitch, for instance, where to me? The work in the Brooklyn Exhibition, it's so diverse. But yet, knowing The body of artists very well at this point I can identify, you know.

Colin Goldberg

A piece by Renati Anaszewska or Tommy Mintz. Even if I've never seen it before, Lee Day like I can, or a leash. And I, you know I could pick the work out and they're really not Unified under a particular style, you know, which I think is interesting. So I appreciate that, you know. And also you know, this conversation made me think about surrealism, the surrealists, and how you incorporated the idea of the exquisite corpse, for instance, into your, you know body of work, and to me a lot of what I do relates to automatic drawing, and the idea of tapping into the subconscious.

Colin Goldberg

You know, in a way that I never really know what the piece is. Gonna be when I started like the piece behind me that was drawn back, you know, over 20 years ago in illustrator, and really there was no preconceived composition, which is how most of my most of my, you know. 2D work is comes about. And that was definitely, you know, something that Drew from the surrealist. So I think that you know. They're sort of personal agendas aside. There's always something interesting, you know, to be to be taken from these different movements, and I think you know for me, personally, like not all work is necessary, not all our work is necessarily rooted in emotion, like I think about conceptual art, for instance, and things like that where you know, maybe there maybe the case could be made that it is really, ultimately like what is human except what differentiates us from machines. Right? But I think there's different levels of how directly related to an emotional State or feeling, you know, work is. But that's definitely something that I get from your work is, it's very closely linked.

Colin Goldberg

And the piece that's in the real and it actually opens up the real in the Brooklyn Show, and that work, by the way. For our viewing audience, can be viewed on the real which is available at Techspressionism.com slash, Brooklyn Slash real and actually saw. You know, you were one of the artists that I edited into the real, actually edited the original reel for the Southampton Show. And then there was, you know, a bunch of different artists that I received work from through Tommy and that piece was very compelling. So I sort of. And I wanted to sort of showcase the new artists, the beginning of the reel so actually placed that as the 1st piece in the reel.

Colin Goldberg

And I didn't. You know I didn't know the backstory to it. Regarding diagnosis and all this other stuff that's very, you know. Intimately personal. Content, right? And so, you know, to hear about and to learn about it. It's interesting to you know, really get some insight into into what the work is about, you know, and I think that it just speaks to the idea that you don't need to know what the work is about to appreciate it. It's like, you know, a poem. You don't really need to know what the intent Of the author or the poet was to appreciate or have your own interpretation, you know, and I never would have really even thought about that as an origin story for the work, or when you, when I had spoken with you in Brooklyn, too, and you told me that you actually were a professor of dance, I was like, that makes sense, you know, and I mean now I can understand that work from a different angle. So and then the final question is, how do you see the future of art? It's a very broad question, but.

I definitely think that The blockchain is.

cari ann shim sham

Part of it. As far as future. Thinking forward thinking goes. It's just offering so much opportunity as far as. The ability to put work on to the blockchain to make that mark, and to signify that it is truly yours and with like. In the traditional art world, something like 50 to 60% of work is plagiarized. That. The blockchain allows that to not happen to, to not have plagiarism in the sense of like I am the artist. I'm putting it here. I'm saying this is it.

cari ann shim sham

And. That is.

Or if someone does plagiarize your work, you could always say, Well, actually, we look back to this particular spot. Yeah.

Exactly so the archive and then beyond that, of course, the ability to have it be accessible to the world. So people can see it. All they really need is some sort of like connection to Internet to be able to experience the work. So it's not just tied up in some like, you know, museum in one part of the world that you can't get to, or in a shipping container, you know, in New York city or so the accessibility is really huge. And then the ability to buy and sell it on the market.

cari ann shim sham

And to have royalties to receive compensation every additional time it's being sold. And to also track that.

cari ann shim sham

The how the art is moving around right? So like, who's buying it? Who's selling it? Who's holding it. That legacy to be able to see it on the actual work. And also The ability to own work. By artists that you would have previously not been able to own work by. You know. Before this. Blockchain situation, I would not have been able to own a Lorna Mills or a Carla Gannis. And now I can own that artist work. I can. I can own a lot of artists work. And I have the ability by owning that work to support that artist and say, Yes, please more. And so this economy that is you know. Digital art as currency.

cari ann shim sham

Is a really Solid way of supporting artists directly. And I see that as a profound future for the art world. Yeah. So that's what I'm thinking about a lot and also thinking a lot about these Xr spaces, these metaverse spaces, and how those can grow and build and create community in the art world. I think what you are doing with Techspressionism is also a very like Futuristic model of growing a community through this like online world, you know, growing community through The device of zoom. So that you have accessibility for artists all around the world to come together and share work and create A movement. I think that's the future. Yeah. And then Future.

cari ann shim sham

High, deep, and wide. Do we have a future, you know, like, how do we? How do we build sustainably? How do we. Create an Equity? And how do we build resourcefully as well, so that we have a future.

Alright. Well, very well said, you know, and I echo your enthusiasm about the blockchain. You know I personally am an advocate found out about it over the course of the development of this project. Expressionism, you know, very early on. And I immediately saw that this is a huge part of the future Of the art industry. In a way like, you know, the art world is such a to me a very loaded term, because the way that it had been what it had referred to in the past was very exclusive, not very inclusive. In fact, the exclusivity of it is what made it the art world, right as versus the world or the larger world that we live in, you know. So I think almost the blockchain and nfts created an alternate art world. It's almost like, you know, the marvel multiverse where in that version of the art world the artists run it right? And the dealers are like, huh!

Colin Goldberg

You know what I mean, and very interesting it, you know. It's really changed the dynamic. I think of what being an artist means what being a collector means. You know, I was able to support a lot of the artists in the community. After selling some nfts early on and started to put together, you know, a Techspressionism collection and you know. And that's just there. You know what I mean, and there's no intention of selling off any of the work, or whatever you know, and I feel like The whole idea of a smart contract, and artists receiving residuals in perpetuity without anyone else having to be involved without there needing to be a lawyer collecting it or anything. It's in the code, you know, and that's to me a beautiful thing.

Colin Goldberg

It just is very empowering, I think, to artists and you know, and for better or worse, you know, Beeple and his whole group the whole phenomenon of people slash board, apes, slash crypto punks, you know all of that just raised awareness, you know, about technology based work, the blockchain and everything. Granted, a lot of it was through sensationalism, around the price tags associated with the work. But whatever it took to get people's attention, it showed showed people that.

Colin Goldberg

You know, this is not A fringe situation, you know. I forget what year it was. But there was definitely year where the amount of work sold that was on the blockchain surpassed all physical work, including all auction houses, Sotheby's, Christie's everything combined. And that's.

Pretty, astonishing.

Pretty astonishing. Yeah, pretty wild. So it's very cool, and it's cool to see you guys supporting tezos and object and fx hash, and all these other, you know, aspects or facets of what the blockchain is. So kudos

Yeah.

You know. So Yeah, I think you know it's been. It's been a really good conversation. I appreciate the time and all the insight you provided into your work. And I'm really looking forward to this salon that's going to be happening in 2 days, and the opening of the exhibition. And yeah, absolutely. So.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Carrie Ann. Alright. Well. With that we will stop recording. And in 3, 2, 1, and cut.