Techspressionism Video Archive [BETA]
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Salon 110 // Loop Art Critique

Recorded September 3, 2026 · moderated by Tommy Mintz

Video Description

On July 27, 2026, the Loop Art Critique portal page launched on Techspressionism.com, signifying the start of a formal collaboration between the two communities.

Loop Art Critique is a virtual community connecting artists through critique, conversation, and creative exchange.

In this Salon, you will meet some of the amazing artists behind this project, as well as some members of the Techspressionist community that have created projects within Loop in the past. Techspressionism will be collaborating with Loop to create ongoing collaborative projects bringing artists together to express themselves creatively in virtual space.

Founded by artist Ariel Baron-Robbins in 2022, Loop began collaborating with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami) in 2025 on programming that brings artists together for dialogue, exhibitions, and learning. Loop’s digital infrastructure is developed and supported by Mud Foundation.

Synopsis

Click a time code to jump to that point in the video, or an artist’s name to learn more about them.

Salon 110, "Loop Art Critique" (September 3, 2026), is moderated by Tommy Mintz and based on a collaboration between the Techspressionist community and Loop Art Critique, a virtual community and space. Colin Goldberg introduces the collaboration and notes that live translation captions are available▶ 0:02. Ariel Baron-Robbins, a founder of Loop, describes its history, philosophy and purpose▶ 2:29, including keeping one person's philosophy of art from limiting who takes part▶ 13:10. Carolina Kleine Samson talks about her role as graphic designer for the site▶ 25:31, and Sahar Moussavi describes a six-week Loop residency▶ 40:11 and a piece she made there▶ 53:41. Renata Janiszewska shows a space she created, inspired by Louise Bourgeois▶ 58:30. The salon ends with audience questions, including access for people with slower connections▶ 1:25:38.

This summary was written with AI assistance from the recording’s transcript and reviewed by the archive’s editor. The timestamps link to the moments discussed. Please check details against the video.

Participants (5)

Watch on YouTube // // Download transcript (.DOCX / PDF)

Cite this session

Techspressionist Salon 110, “Loop Art Critique,” recorded September 3, 2026. Techspressionism Video Archive. [DOI pending Zenodo deposit]

Colin Goldberg

Hi everyone, my name is Colin Goldberg, and we're here at Techspressionist SALON number 110. Today is Thursday, September 3rd, 2026, and I'm zooming in from North Bennington, Vermont. This salon is, based around a collaboration between the Techspressionist community and Loop Art Critique, which is a really interesting, sort of virtual community, or in virtual space. I'll let… I'll let the Loop people kind of elaborate on it a little bit, more. But, the… kind of collaboration came about from, some early meetings that we had, with, Renata, myself, and Ariel Baron-Robbins, who's the founder of Loop, and started to talk about, you know, different ways that we could work together, and most recently this spring, I was fortunate enough to, meet up with cha down in Miami Beach, who's been, an instrumental part of Loop Art Critique, and we were brainstorming a little bit about how we could, you know, start to… to do some fun things together. So, as of right now, on Techspressionism.com, if you click on the main menu, there is an item called Loop, which allows you to jump right into Loop's, space, which is, again, something that will be explained in a few moments. I also wanted to note that we do have, in this Zoom session, live translation available with captioning, so if you want to want to… access that, you would click the more button down towards the bottom, it has three dots in it, and then, hit Show Captions, and then at that point, you should be able to, select the language, your speaking language, and the language you would want it to be translated into.

Colin Goldberg

So, without further ado, I am going to introduce our moderator, Tommy Mintz. So, take it away, Tommy.

Tommy Mintz

Thank you, Colin. Hi, I'm Tommy Mintz, I'm a Techspressionist artist, in Brooklyn, New York today, and I am pleased to be the moderator of today's salon. Today's salon is going to be… A number of participants in the Loop Art Critique, talking about Loop and all of the fascinating things that are going on there. And I'd like to introduce Ariel, who's one of the founders of Loop, and have her talk about its history, philosophy, founding, and purpose. Ariel, do you have a screen share you'd like to begin?

Tommy Mintz

And also, can you tell us where your Zoom is.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Yes, I do. I am zooming in from, Miami International Airport.

Tommy Mintz

Awesome.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

It's just,.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Let's see, can you guys see my screen?

Tommy Mintz

Yeah, I see.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

I'll be able to. Pierre loading. Don't pull objects. Okay. So, I'm going to use one of… The versus… let me just double check, you guys can see, okay. We use one of our… what we call is a verse, which is just, like, a room, you know, inside of a loop, a virtual reality, room. And I'm just gonna kinda use it to keep myself on track, and… and hopefully I can, not go too much over. But… Ariel, I'm not sure…

Colin Goldberg

If you see it, but we see Tommy's, and now me, a Zoom window overlapping your browser window. I'm not sure if you see that on your screen. There we go. I didn't want that to obscure your screen share.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

I'm just used to screens within screens within screens, so it doesn't bother me, but, but yeah, so my name is, Ariel Baron-Robbins, I'm an artist, I am a professor, and, that's supposed to be artist first, but I recently actually stopped being a professor, but it's a long story. I started Loop I started Loop in 2022. And when I started Loop, basically, I was, I was… seeing an issue where we were having a huge influx of digital art, and I always taught computer art, I should say. So I always… I had this huge influx of people that were coming in because of NFTs, which I thought was an awesome thing. I was very fascinated by, like.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

How they were coming in from, like, digital art first, instead of, like, from a more, like, like, traditional art, and then to digital art. And, I noticed, though, that a lot of digital art history really wasn't becoming well known, and so… and also that they didn't have any peer critique for their, like, digital work, so, and it kind of showed in the artwork. You know, that there wasn't a whole lot of this history known in the peer critique. Not in all of it, but in some of it. And so, I was asked by Rodofa Perraza, who is from the Mudd Foundation.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

And you can go and find it at mudd.foundation. And he has an exhibition space, and this is an art and tech nonprofit. Where he puts on a different, like, one-year program called Media Under Dystopia every year, and he invites artists to do work for this, exhibition. He invited a group of artists to do work that required that the artwork actually, like, change over the course of a year. So, what I did in… to deal with that was I said, well, I'm going to create this, like.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Critique space that's an artwork, because I feel like I'm very obsessed with the process of art, and a lot of my artwork deals with process, but I was thinking, like, how could you actually, like, directly be involved with like, talking about process, why don't you create a critique space where people can get feedback on their work, but that is digital, in its nature, so that artwork doesn't need to be translated from, like, a digital space to a physical space to be shown, right? Because every time I've been in a residency or any sort of chaired studios, I've had to, like, put up screens, or I've had to print out my work, I've had to, like, do this translation process. But the metaverse doesn't require you to do that translation process. You can just keep it digital. And you can also do scale, and do all sorts of building things, and it's wonderful. So, I created this, like, system, this structure. I also love Fluxus, and I love system-based artwork that would require artists to come together in little groups, participate in 6 weeks of critique.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

And then have an exhibition, because the six weeks of critique was private, so I thought it would be nice to have, like, a public thing after that. So I created these rooms, that were based, loosely on, like, this was kind of the salon. And this also has, like, very strong connections to the story of the Impressionists and the Salon de Rayfizer, because I was thinking of a lot of these artists as being, like, disruptors, and also at the fact that they go from creating work to exhibiting it right away. And… and I also had stuff that was just based on, like, my own artwork, and my fascination with process, and, and some of my dad's… my dad's an architect, some of his, architecture designs. What I wanted to make sure, though, was that Loop was not an institution, it's an artwork. It's always been an artwork, even though it's evolved from this one-year sort of conceptual art exercise. It is not going to be an institution.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

And I would talk about it as, like, in Samson's work, because it is inside of, a space that is designed, you know, it's not a white walls. These are my watercolors that have been scanned. That make up the sky and the ground. And, and there's no straight walls in Loop, which does require that, you know, people have to either upload their own white walls, or they…. They just eat them, right? I always think about also that the spaces that you're in, the places that you're in, how that affects your thoughts and your creativity. So, you know, I think this also affects the kind of work that gets made here. But yeah, we were named after the salon, the refuser. There was the SALON, the SALON de refuset, and then, we also have the critique club.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

So if you go onto Loop's, homepage, this is actually… Loop Studios, which we'll talk about in a second, but if you go into Loop's homepage, you can see that we have the Critique Club up here. And then we have all of these different verses. So each of these you click into to come into that verse, into that space, which looks, like the one I'm sharing here, but with different stuff in it. I also wanted to make sure, because I've had experiences with residencies, and… and Loop is not a residency, it's something like it, I guess, but it's not. But with other shared spaces and things, I wanted to make sure that people had the chance to apply anonymously.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Because it's… it's always frustrated me as a person who comes from, you know, a place that has a negative history, that people would always see where I was from. They'd always see what kind of, like, colleges that I went to, or if somebody didn't go to college, they would see that. They would see, like, basically what kind of college I could afford, you know, or if I didn't go at all. They could see a lot of information that doesn't have to do with my artwork.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

On a… something like a CV, or a bio, or anything like that. So, I never thought that was very fair. I also wanted to make sure there was no money involved whatsoever, because too much of our lives as artists are involved with money. So nobody would ever pay anything, nobody ever would participate in the critiques or anything. And, I just self-financed it for the first like, 4 years. And, and then actually now the expenses are being paid by, an art museum, which is great. And then also that if people wanted to stay anonymous, they could stay anonymous. We all have… avatars here.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

So, right now, what I look like is this. But… my favorite, and what I actually want to say my most, like, the most people know me. They don't know me like you guys are saying me. They don't know, like, that I'm this, like, Bond woman. They know me that I'm, this tree trunk thing that, like, my neighbor made in the country. So that is what my usual, like, face is. And I appre… I actually love that. I like being a tree trunk. I think it's a better reflection of who I am.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

But, anyway, to go on, we've done this now. These are all of the different, going back to the very first one, Cohort 2. We're on Cohort 22 now, to just put that in perspective. And we've done all sorts of different things. Jiffy Arts was one that we did, and we've had… the other thing that I decided to do early on was to have a different juror, so every single time, we had a different session, which is… the session is 6 weeks of critique followed by an exhibition. Every time we had a different group.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

I wanted to keep the group small, because there's better critiques that way, and we would have somebody that would come in, and so it wouldn't always be my decision, you know, who would.

Tommy Mintz

Eight pens. Ariel, you have 2 minutes left. Yeah.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

It would always be my decision who got in or who didn't, and in this anonymous way, so that even, like, one person's, you know, perspective or philosophy on art wouldn't be the thing that limits who gets to participate. And, and then gradually, that role of the judge became more of a bigger role of, like, the guest, and the guest ends up, like, taking… sometimes even, you know, putting, themes onto their critiques. And they sit in on a critique once a week.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Yeah, so it's, 6 weeks, twice a week, and then I'm gonna talk a little bit extra. And then since then. Oh, that's mine. Since then, we've actually gotten a Knight grant, which is a tech expression grant, which has given us a lot of new capabilities, and we also, like I said before, we are now part of a museum called the Institute of Contemporary Art. We're inside of their art and research program. And they've taken over a lot of expenses, and also raise the amount of money that we give to the guests and to the artists.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

To participate, and they pay that. And then after that, what has also happened is that I always envisioned to have a shared studio program. So, cha and Carolina are going to talk about that. And… and I just want to say I'm super excited. That, Techspressionism, that we're having, like, a closer relationship, because we've been having a relationship for a while. Renata was a guest for us. And cha been a part of Techspressionism for a lot. We've been talking for a long time, and so it's just awesome that we've kind of gotten the, we've gone ahead and, you know.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Gotten married a little bit. Alright.

Tommy Mintz

So cool. Thank you, Ariel. We're gonna take questions at the end for everybody. I'd like cha to, do you have a screen share that you're gonna do as well? To get ready to explain his residency and talk about the role of the guest, how easy it is to apply? And tell us where you're, zooming in from, cha. Thank you very much.

Unattributed

Cha:): Thank you, Tommy, and thank you, everybody, for being here today. Cha:): I'm zooming in from… Miami Beach, Florida.

Unattributed

Cha:): And I… the first time I encountered a Loop Art Critique was… Cha:): an open call on… on Instagram. Cha:): Ariel, not shortly before that, had mistaken me for another artist and sent a message to me. Cha:): And….

Unattributed

Cha:): when she… put out the open call, I checked it out, and I thought, this is great. Cha:): All I have to do is submit 5 images.

Unattributed

Cha:): So it was very easy to apply. Cha:): And I loved it. And the fact that…. Cha:): that I became, as a resident of Loop Art Critique, functioning as a residency, I became… Cha:): part of Ariel's artwork.

Tommy Mintz

Ariel, can you stop sharing? I think we have your screen up still, I'm so sorry. I think we didn't get cha screen yet.

Unattributed

Cha:): And I just thought that was a really beautiful thing.

Tommy Mintz

Cool, thank you.

Unattributed

Cha:): to be participating in this… in this thing, which I wasn't even sure exactly what it was yet, but the fact that it was an artwork. Cha:): And that, participating, I was part of the artwork. Cha:): In other words, the Loop Art Critique really… Cha:): It exists, but it exists in the best way. Cha:): As the artists who… who come… And… share their art. Cha:): And put together a show, and talked to each other.

Unattributed

Cha:): So it's very easy to apply. I encourage everybody to do that in the future. You can apply as many times as you like. We have Cha:): Quite a few artists who are… Cha:): Who have applied multiple times, and have come back and spent more time with us, and we love that.

Unattributed

Cha:): So I was in Loop Art Critique 2, and… Cha:): shortly after that, Ariel invited me… asked me if I would come and substitute for her in one of the critiques, and I said, well, sure, I'd love to. Cha:): And then not long after that. Cha:): She asked me to help out a little more… Cha:): And I had the idea that I would be the official Cha:): Documentary photographer, because part of my art practice is, using the screenshot.

Unattributed

Cha:): So now… Well, it's almost 3 years later. Cha:): I'm still working as a documentary photographer, for Loop Art Critique. Cha:): And… also as a critique leader, which I love. Cha:): I've really found a home here. I'm… Cha:): pain… I would say I'm painfully shy, which… Cha:): I'm just kind of realizing what that means, the pain, but… Cha:): So, in Loop Art Critique, under the guise of an avatar, Cha:): I've had the wonderful opportunity to Cha:): Meet artists from around the world, and share time and space with them.

Unattributed

Cha:): Which is just a priceless… a priceless thing. Cha:): So the… the… when Loop Art Critique functions as a… as a… as an art residency. Cha:): One of its many functions… Cha:): We do these series of critiques. Cha:): That lead up to a final group show. Cha:): And so the critiques function as, you know, your typical art critique, but they also work Cha:): As a way to build a… Cha:): Small or micro-community over a short period of time, if it works out well, to the point where Cha:): Everybody gets to know each other a little better.

Unattributed

Cha:): And it's comfortable enough With each other, that they're able to work together to create A final show. Cha:): And that's what we're looking at here. This is the… Cha:): exhibition hub space is kind of what we're… we're calling it. The thing about Loop Art Critique is we're making it up as we go along in a lot of things. I mean, we didn't know what this. Cha:): what this… type of space. Cha:): Is or was, but it's kind of settled into an exhibition hub space.

Unattributed

Cha:): Which is home to a number of portals which lead out to, individual Cha:): Verses for each of the artists in the… in the space. Cha:): So I'll just… go around and show you which are the portals. Not all of these objects are portals. Cha:): But you click one, and you end up… In a verse.

Unattributed

Cha:): And we'll just click into… One here.

Unattributed

Audio shared by cha:): The key guacamomas, unaware of their former state.

Unattributed

Audio shared by cha:): Which for which they both receive several. Audio shared by cha:): There was a time when the key were the forest. Not of the forest. Cha:): Mr. Audio shared by cha:): the forest. Audio shared by cha:): Things like… Can I ask her about.

Unattributed

Audio shared by cha:): Or something.

Unattributed

Audio shared by cha:): After some time, the key forgot themselves. Cha:): This is… this is a work by… audio shared by cha:): Into the world and its new ways. Audio shared by cha:): Which were now just… the ways. Cha:): I work about… Kind of… speculative anthropology. Cha:): Astrological.

Unattributed

Cha:): And objects are placed around this space. Cha:): And when you approach, He's interesting. Cha:): And audio is triggered. Audio shared by cha:): There are only 4 events during which a key's interred self becomes apparent.

Unattributed

Audio shared by cha:): They're nice at home.

Unattributed

Cha:): Another interesting facet of the group of artists is that They're each… Cha:): Our guest juror each has their… their own taste, I guess. Cha:): So we get s- we get… Cha:): A group of artists that are… In a sense, curated. Cha:): So… Dependent upon who the juror happens to be.

Unattributed

Cha:): Well, I think that's… I think that's it for me.

Tommy Mintz

I was about to say, you have 2 minutes left. John, thank you so much, that was real…

Colin Goldberg

Tommy, you're muted, I'm not sure if you're…

Tommy Mintz

My button stopped working. Am I muted still?

Colin Goldberg

Nope, can hear you now.

Unattributed

Cha:): Wonderful.

Tommy Mintz

Well, cha, yeah, thank you so much. I love the Tiny Desk, series of music that's happening. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but the idea of, like, the desktop as, this… this hub space that we launch off into is wonderful, like, sensory change. Anyway, I know we have to talk at the end. We'll have questions about that at the end, write down any questions for cha? Yeah, thank you. I'm gonna, ask Carolina to talk next about, her studio, and maybe GALINA's studio. Can you talk about your role as the graphic designer for the site, and a little about, the annual family reunion event?

Tommy Mintz

Carolina?

Carolina Kleine Samson

Hi, everyone. I'm Carolina Kleine Samson. Right now, I'm in Salvador, de Vallia, Brazil, but I'm based in Patagonia, Argentina. So, thank you very much for inviting us, to showing you. So, okay, I'm gonna talk a little bit about maybe, about the design and communication… loop communication,. Like, I want to mention, too, that cha, he was, like, at the beginning, when he… he was part of Loop, he really encouraged me to… to apply, for… for Loop, and I applied for the cohort 5… number 5 with Lorna Mills, so I get into Loop, to the residency.

Carolina Kleine Samson

And after that, after a while, I start to, like, showing Luke team. So, yeah, I'm really grateful for that, for cha and Ariel. To invite me to be part. So… Okay, I'm gonna talk a little bit, maybe, I'm gonna just start with, maybe for… for the design, like, graphic design of Loop. I think that is an interesting part, because now, we are, like, kind of using, the platform to create the designs, you know? Before that. I was just using, like, more regular, like, programs to… to… to… to do design, graphic design, but right now.

Carolina Kleine Samson

I think we are trying to do everything inside loop, so that is a really nice thing. Like, design, like, we are kind of, like, really living inside loop, so I really like that. And also, for graphic design, sometimes it's a challenge, because, it's not a platform made for that, but I think it's interesting that you kind of, like, we kind of find, like, there, like, our own style inside the platform with the native elements. So maybe I can share a little bit, maybe we can go to the studios, and then kind of show a little bit how… we are using, the platform to create graphic design? I don't know. I'm not sure. Sorry, my English.

Carolina Kleine Samson

I'm not an English native speaker, but yeah, I can do.

Tommy Mintz

Doing great.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Spanish.

Tommy Mintz

This all sounds great.

Carolina Kleine Samson

And also I'm kind of a little nervous, nervous, so, yeah. Maybe, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna share, the studios, and maybe kind of explain a little bit… about how we make, the graphic design inside, the space. Yeah, so I'm gonna do that. Okay… let's… Okay, someone is in there, maybe Ariel? Someone? Can you see the screen?

Renata Janiszewska

Carolina Kleine Samson

Okay. Every… who is… Okay. Okay, so as Ariel mentioned, she envisioned, like, a kind of, A place where artists, have their own studio in the digital space. So, I think that is a really interesting idea, because, I was searching, and there is not, like, other places like that, like, kind of to… to have, like. Artist studios in the same place. Actually, we… last year, we organized kind of a virtual studio visit day, something like that. I don't remember exactly the name, but, you know, in the physical space, we have this kind of, studio busy day, where all the artists open their studios, and then the people go through them and visit the studios, so we organized that, last year.

Carolina Kleine Samson

And the idea is also to have other, projects or platforms that can show in us, with this kind of, Tour, yeah, virtual studio tour. So yeah, but I couldn't find other place, to kind of, collaborate, so if you have any idea, or if you know other places that have, like. Artist Studios, please let us, let us know. So here, okay, we have each, kind of, each, image or object is like a portal of, different studios. For example, here we have Terry Espataro, we have GALINA, too, that she's really, part of, like, she's really part of the Loop community, Wenchong, Renata, that, okay, you, you have your studio under construction, that is the idea, too, that… we have, like, also, like, we have work in progress inside each studio, right?

Carolina Kleine Samson

Mona, I have my studio here, and also chess studio, so… we can jump into one… one of the studios, so we can… we can, yeah, see. So we're gonna go to GALINA's. I don't know how… if I have… how… it's okay, I'm okay, with the time, or…

Tommy Mintz

Yeah, you have about 3 minutes left.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Carolina Kleine Samson

Okay….

Carolina Kleine Samson

Hmm.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Oh, my internet connection, because I'm…

Tommy Mintz

You have to load slow when you're using Zoom. Yeah, yeah, the two of them.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Yeah, that's…

Tommy Mintz

Makes sense.

Carolina Kleine Samson

I just got here yesterday, so it's a… I have a new Wi-Fi relationship, and… It's like, it was kind of complicated to date, so, yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe it's too heavy, GALINA space?

Unattributed

Cha:): Yeah, it might be.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Tommy Mintz

Cha just put the link in the chat, and everybody could just peek in on their own browser if the share… is it gonna load. Oh wait, here it comes. We see it now.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Okay. Okay, I'm gonna go to maybe…. Cha, and then I can really… okay….

Carolina Kleine Samson

Also, I want to mention that cha hosts, every Sunday, like, a critique session, like, that is open to everyone. So, yeah.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Hmm….

Carolina Kleine Samson

Bueno.

Carolina Kleine Samson

No, bueno. It's my internet, sorry.

Tommy Mintz

A-OK, we've all experienced the joys of…

Carolina Kleine Samson

Yeah, it's my new Wi-Fi is not working well. Okay. Bueno. Let's… I'm gonna try with my… That's pretty simple.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Okay….

Carolina Kleine Samson

It's not loop, it's my Wi-Fi, so… yeah. He said, bueno.

Tommy Mintz

While it's loading, could you tell us a little bit about the family reunion event?

Carolina Kleine Samson

Okay, so, yeah, the family reunion, is an annual event. That, is… and also, it's, like, a kind of a performance, so, because, like, we, Ariel cha and I, we are, like, spending, like. 3 days inside loop, almost, like, non-stop. And also, it's like a… it's like a… way of meet, again, all the, like, the former loopers, lupus, so, yeah, we spent 3 days there, with, like, there, there's a lot of activities, like, workshops, talks, we have a group show.

Carolina Kleine Samson

We have a lot of, like, conversations, so it's a really interesting, performance. An event, and yeah, this… and every… like, last… no, this year is, like, it was open to every… everyone, so, like, former Loopies and new people are, like, showing us, and experience, the Loop family reunion. I don't know, Ariel, if you wanna say something, like, You wanna add something else?

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Oh, no, I was just… I'm just showing that, other people's studios, but no, Loop Reunion is just a time for everyone to get together, because I also think it's important that people form connections, and obviously, like, we've had lots of people that end up having exhibitions with each other, or that… share open calls, and then end up having exhibitions with each other, so it's just a time for everyone to get together and meet. And because we operate across so many time zones.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

We have it going from 9.30am to 9.30pm. And we decided… cha and I, at first, decided that we were gonna stay in Luke for those 12 hours, for 2 days. And then Carolina has done it too, and so now it's like a semi-performance piece, but it's kind of cool, because anybody can come whenever they want, and one of us will be there, or probably both, all of us, going loopy crazy.

Tommy Mintz

Durational online performance. That's very cool. And it really is building a where I think people are, really building real relationships. It's a…

Carolina Kleine Samson

Tommy Mintz

Wonderful experience. Carolina, is there something that you want to share before we… continue, my timer just went off.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Yeah, I have… oh, here I entered the studio, and I want to mention that many of the artists that I met through Loop, I met them in real person, so in the physical, world, so we also start to collaborate together. I met a lot of artists from Argentina, where… yeah, so we met in real life, and we start also to collaborate, so that is a wonderful thing, too. So, finally, I entered to the… to my studio, so… this is my studio. Also, it's like a… yeah, as I say, it's like… it's a studio, so it's under construction, it's a work in progress.

Carolina Kleine Samson

So now I have some pieces, some… some of my pieces are… related to painting the screen and recycling files. So, you can see that there, and, like, I, I wanna mention something that is related to the graphic design, that is, like, I don't know, we are kind of using everything in here. I'm gonna type something,.

Carolina Kleine Samson

So the idea is to use the tools that we have here. For example, I'm typing on the cha, and I'm creating an object. Here, so… I'm… I'm kind of, using, like, putting information inside Loop, and then I'm, like, taking a screenshot of the information, and voila! The flyer is, is made. So…

Tommy Mintz

Very cool design, I like that.

Carolina Kleine Samson

Yeah, it's like a screenshot. Like, another interesting thing is, like, always in graphic design, it's, like, all about, like, you know, the resolution, and the quality, and things like that, and… I think we are a screenshot-based, because, like, the photographies, there are screenshots, and also the graphic design, too, so… Yeah, yeah, sometimes I upload also, like, like, some pictures to create the flyer, but yeah, this is the kind of the process that we are using.

Tommy Mintz

Very cool, very recursive and referential. In interesting ways. Thank you, Carolina. People, write down your questions for Carolina at the end. We're gonna take questions for everybody at the end. I have… I have a list I'm keeping. We're gonna keep moving, to another participating artist. Sahar is one of, it's expressionist artists from our group who has participated in a six-week loop residency, and I'm hoping… that SAHAR can talk about, what she took away from the experience, and if we can see some of your current work. SAHur on, right? I thought I saw you. Yeah, hi.

Sahar Moussavi

Hi! Hi, everyone. So I'm SAH, I'm, I'm SAHAR, hi. I'm Zooming now from Vancouver, I'm based in Iran, and I'm gonna share my… first, I'm gonna share some slides, from my experience from Duke Art Critic Residency, and then, I'll invite you to join my verse.

Sahar Moussavi

I'm gonna read, so can you see my screen?

Tommy Mintz

Sahar Moussavi

Okay. So, I was selected by, Joey Zaza to participate in DMRAM, Newfound Verse, an art critic group within the Loop Art Critic Residency program. The six-week residency took place from September 8, 2025, through November 23, 2025. We met every Monday and Thursday from 12 to 3 p.m. In the Critic Club, where we engaged in group discussions, artistic feedback, and critical conversations. Through… around our work. So, also, Nina Sobell was… in our group, prompt expression, some… So I… I'm glad I took many screenshots and selfies.

Sahar Moussavi

So, cha, Ariel, and Carolina were our mentors, especially chaa was always there. Throughout the residency, they guided us through the program and supported us throughout the creative process. During the first sessions, we became familiar with the tools and features of the verse. We learned how to upload and incorporate texts, images, and emojis, as well as how to use the pen tool. We also learned how to navigate the verse. Including how to move, explore, and fly through the virtual environment. So this is one of the sessions that we were playing around with pens and uploading huge emojis and converting text to objects in the wares. And that's me, that's my avatar. So, in each session, artists uploaded their artwork to the verse, and other participants engaged in an open conversation about the work.

Sahar Moussavi

The discussions were non-judgmental and supportive, focusing on positive feedback throughout the observations and constructive dialogue. This created a safe and encouraging environment for Artist to share their work, exchange ideas, and learn from one another. So that's me, and I uploaded my artworks. And took a selfie in front of it.

Sahar Moussavi

We also participated in creative workshops led by guest artists and invited speakers. These sessions were both educational and inspiring, offering new perspectives, creative techniques, and opportunities to explore different approaches to art making. So I remember that. This workshop was about, Completing, each other's sentences, I think. One starts with a sentence, and then we have to continue the sentence in the verse. In some sessions, guest artists were invited to share their artistic experience, participant practices, and perspectives with the group. One of the virtual guests… one of the invited guests was fellow Techspressionist Artist Renata, who shared her creative journey and Insights with us. So, at the right, you can see Renata's avatar.

Sahar Moussavi

So one of the most new and interesting experiences for me as a 3D artist was discovering GLB files, created by loopers and other artists. I was already familiar with GLB format, through the Siberiana show. But I had never created an artwork, especially as a GLB file myself. During the residency, I experimented with AI-generated GLB files and explored how they could be used as artistic objects. Within a virtual environment. I later incorporated some of these GLB artworks into my final projects, the Mad Word, presented as part of the exhibition. So these are some of the GLBs I made.

Sahar Moussavi

From real pictures.

Sahar Moussavi

I also created several GLB artworks based on my own hand drawings, this process of transforming my traditional sketches into interactive 3D objects was a completely new and exciting. Experience for me. I became fascinated with this, process, and honestly, still obsessed. So, as you see, these are some, the two objects on the right are, based on, RGLB files, created based on my Ahern drones.

Sahar Moussavi

So, as an optional final project, each participant was invited to create their own verse using XR Creator Studio. I created my verse, inspired by a real mystical location in western Iran called the Throne of SALON, Taqtes, or Layman. This project allowed me to connect my artistic practice with plays rich in history, mythology, and mystery, and to reinterpret it through a contemporary virtual environment. So we're going to visit my Verse later. Also, my piece titled Alchemist's Dream. I made that, image myself, so… is minted and listed in Mona Gallery on Object.com as part of the Dream Ram Neof Angel Bertz exhibition.

Sahar Moussavi

So this is, the poster of the Madward exhibition, and the title was, suggested by, Michael. And, it's official poster… This is the main hall, which we are going to visit. After, after a couple of minutes… and this is the GLB I made through the 6 weeks residency, and it's the portal to my birth. So… I'm gonna stop sharing my Google Slide, and I'm going to put the link in the… cha. And if you can find my, Portal, you can go, through my portal, or I can share my verse, so we can go directly to my verse.

Sahar Moussavi

So I'm sharing, the main hall. Great to see you too, Sina! I encourage everyone to also visit Nina's verse. So I, put the link to the main hall in the cha. If anyone wants to join, I recommend to use Chrome. And log in. If it's difficult, I can just put my verse, I don't know which one.

Sahar Moussavi

Are you going into the main hall?

Tommy Mintz

I have a loading…

Sahar Moussavi

Tommy Mintz

Entering Bertz… Loading bar right now.

Sahar Moussavi

So right now, I'm in the verse.

Sahar Moussavi

So every object you see in the verse is a portal to the artist's verse. Everything, every artwork, every object. You see it's a portal.

Colin Goldberg

Do you want to try sharing your screen, SAHAR? For those of us who are maybe watching and recording?

Sahar Moussavi

Sahar Moussavi

Didn't she see my screen, or not? Okay. So this is my… can you see my screen?

Tommy Mintz

Colin Goldberg

Sahar Moussavi

Okay, so, at, the left, top left, you can see my avatar. And, I'm just, showing you diverse, every artist. This is Nina's verse. Which I got lost. Several times. And this is my, my, verse. So even in the caves, there are other, portals, which lead you to, the artist's verse. So I will go to my verse, you can hear Sloanam SALON.

Tommy Mintz

We have, 2 minutes left.

Sahar Moussavi

Sahar Moussavi

So I have to say that my internet was awful during the residency, and I missed many, many Staff? But now, this is my verse, here. I'm gonna fly, because, it's a little… Showing… I'll go up… I don't know why my cursor is very big, I was not able to…

Tommy Mintz

I don't see the cursor on the screen share, I think it's okay for us. Oh, maybe it's there.

Sahar Moussavi

I think my lovely screening, I hope.

Sahar Moussavi

So these are the GLBs I made, from the actual… buildings and the lake in the… The real… the real location?

Sahar Moussavi

This is a lake, and my golden jailbi here. Which has a story behind it.

Sahar Moussavi

And you can go to, into the building, and the ruins, and lie… so this is my dorm.

Sahar Moussavi

And I added a mirror here. So we can see… that's my avatar in the mirror, and the light. And I can change the light and everything, and the lighting. There is a setting for the lighting. That's my tree on the sphere. My, my, description….

Sahar Moussavi

Scroll down….

Sahar Moussavi

So we had, one session before the exhibition, and, we had, some guests and other artists, help me to… make my verse a little better. Like, putting reflections on… Putting a mirror to the… Lake…. I'm trying to show you the details of my….

Sahar Moussavi

-Oh.

Sahar Moussavi

Semi,.

Sahar Moussavi

We go inside the building.

Sahar Moussavi

So that's my verse. And there is, an exit… an exit in, bottom left… which shows you how can you exit. I put the exit. Icon.

Sahar Moussavi

I have a guest.

Sahar Moussavi

I think that's the avatar of someone visiting. Is it Carolina? No.

Unattributed

Cha:): Ariel.

Tommy Mintz

One else in their head. It might have been me. I might… I'm not sure if my avatar still.

Unattributed

Cha:): I mean, Ariel.

Sahar Moussavi

Cool. Yellow…

Tommy Mintz

Oh, cool, cool. This is really beautiful, SAHAR. Thank you. So… interesting to sort of get a sense of past and future in an int… you know, in this recombined… mine space that you're… Creating for us? Really, really fantastic.

Sahar Moussavi

Thanks, I had a few other GLBs, but my internet was not really good, so my purse crashed once, and I had to remove some of the objects and GLBs from… it was a very bad, situation, internal situation during those… during the residency, so… Yeah.

Tommy Mintz

Be a flying cow. That is a really fantastic, introduction to the work you did here, and I hope you continue on this. This is… really. New… new… New frontiers in art is what I feel like we're all viewing here right now. And…

Sahar Moussavi

Tommy Mintz

People write down your questions for SAHAR, for, The end of our meeting. We're gonna, I think look at one more space that Renata created, so hold your questions until after Renata, and then…. Yeah, I mean, really. Do you want to see how many I've written down so far? I have a lot of questions here, so be prepared. Renata, are you able to share a screen, and talk about, the Louise Bourgeois, Sunday SALON, and talk about the naming of it? A little bit there.

Renata Janiszewska

Sure, I'm going to share my screen. Thank you, Tommy, and thank you, SAHAR, for that great view inside your space. The, The scale is what I really enjoy when you're inside a verse, it's very different than any other kind of… room that you put your work into. And we saw that in SAHARS with the little dancing figures and the huge GLB files. So here we are. Can everybody see?

Tommy Mintz

I don't have a screen share up yet. Is that what you're hoping to share?

Renata Janiszewska

Tommy Mintz

Give it one more click, maybe.

Renata Janiszewska

Okay…

Tommy Mintz

This has been a relatively seamless it's an Expressionism SALON. Normally, we're always… getting a lot of glitches in here. We're in now, Renata. We have your screen share, and we see your reverse. I'm gonna…

Renata Janiszewska

Okay, so this is the Louise Bourgeois Sunday SALON space. And before I take you around on a tour, I just wanted to say how absolutely grateful I am to Ariel. She invited me to be a guest critique leader, and that's how I met cha and Carolina. And the experience of being in the space for 6 weeks with artists whose work I had chosen. And I chose it without knowing who they were. They didn't have to give a bio, as Ariel mentioned, or an artist statement. And having a blind jury, or a blind juror, as I was.

Renata Janiszewska

It made it really fair, and I really… just want to say how much I applaud that kind of… Policy, if, you know, if more… if more residencies and more competitions were judged blindly, I think that the art world would be a lot better off. So… I made… I made some work in the… in the metaverse after the residency, because I was allowed some use of the XR space. And I made a lot of, still life photography inside worlds that… or verses that I had created using 2D JPEGs of my paintings with… combined with 3D objects that were animated.

Renata Janiszewska

I made one video that I was really happy with, and I liked it so well that now I've got myself a studio for a year in loop that I can… do whatever in. Every Sunday, I'm here at the Louise Bourgeois Sunday SALON,. She… I wanted to go this way. There's a photograph of her there. And…. You can… if you're… if you come to the space, you can go visit this website, which talks about Louise Bourgeois' life and career. And to the right of it, there's a MoMA website.

Renata Janiszewska

That talks about her drawings. It's quite comprehensive. Louise Bourgeois lived on the Lower West Side for a long time, and she hosted a Sunday SALON in her home every Sunday for her students and for other artists who were invited to come and have a drink and present work in a very non… Judgmental and nurturing kind of environment, and that's exactly what I found. Here, in this SALON, you can come on Sundays between 12 and 2 p.m. Eastern, or 5 and 7 p.m. Eastern.

Renata Janiszewska

And cha will be here, and I will be here at the 5pm SALON. We see a couple… a GLB file of cha here, the green Sonriza, which is part of a really large series he's done. I think he's done hundreds of them. And to the right, you see five works by SAHAR. This is what I mean about putting a JPEG into the space. She's just uploaded these photos, and you can enlarge them. I don't know if it's not working here, but there's a way to…

Sahar Moussavi

I pinned them, so…

Renata Janiszewska

Oh, you pin them, okay. So, you can blow up your JPEG to be really monumental in this space. This, for example, on the right. This, looks like a website page. That could go, like, 4 or 5 times bigger than that. And you can see, also, you can… know that sound is spatial, so you can sort of hear people coming closer and going farther away. There's a portal to this current exhibition. This is a project here. The recycling bin is a project by Carolina, who's an amazing curator. I've been in a number of shows that she's curated, and it's a recycling bin for your used files.

Renata Janiszewska

This is a GLB that I made recently for an exhibition that Galina Shevchenko curated it was an AR exhibition that took place partly in Venice, Italy, and Venice, California. There's, to the right of… it is a photograph by Tommy Mintz, part of his automated digital collage series. And I think we've already seen that you can fly. I'm gonna try to fly into the red… GLB file. That cha… Maids?

Renata Janiszewska

So here we are inside a GLB. And you can have meetings in here, if you want some privacy, or… it's just another way of looking. At the work. Oh, I've gone the wrong way.

Renata Janiszewska

I'm out… I'm out in space now. And now I'm below? Okay. So again, I encourage you to come visit on Sundays and talk about your work. You can upload your work here really easily, and it doesn't have to stay in the space. It's a really, really wonderful project. The entire Loop Bar Critique has enriched my life as an artist so much, and I can't say thanks enough again to Ariel cha and Carolina.

Tommy Mintz

Fantastic. Thank you, Renata. Really… lovely to see how the collaboration you know, between Techspressionism and… excuse me, and Loop, I think is a very, Simpatico, natural one. Colin… geez, excuse me. Colin, do you have any… comments you'd like to share about Lew BenTechspressionism meeting, and how that came about? Do you have a story about that? Miami.

Colin Goldberg

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess, Yeah, well, you know, in the beginning, I kind of just, you know, mentioned that he and I met up, you know, last time I was in Miami, but I did actually want to bring up, Siberiana, which is a project that you were largely responsible for as an architect, which was our own sort of version of this idea of a, you know, a, A virtual space where artists had their studios, and I thought maybe, you know, that the nature of the collaboration could somehow you know, rekindle that spirit of what was accomplished in Siberiana.

Colin Goldberg

In, you know, merging with what Loop is doing in some sort of an interesting way, I just feel like there's a lot of shared ethos, you know, between the two communities, and, you know, the idea of openness. Not requiring any… any money from anybody to, you know, participate, and having it be, you know, as technologically, sort of. Open-ended as possible. That is, people with a lot of experience and expertise can go in and do their thing, and people with virtually no experience, you know, working in 3D or even in a virtual environment can come in and participate, so… you know, I think that, really, you know, I'm interested in looking to the future of what can be accomplished, by kind of, like, you know, the overlap and the Venn diagrams of, of, of loop and Techspressionism. And I think that, you know, having the jump-off page to loop in the Techspressionism site is just kind of a first step. I was making some notes to myself here about maybe adding in the, Louise Bourgeois SALON schedule on that page, so, like, visitors to the Techspressionism site will know, hey, like, on these particular times, on Sundays, I could jump in here and meet a whole bunch of new artists, you know, and I think that, it's a different kind of experience than the salons in that it's sort of… you know, everyone is in there, like, participating in real time simultaneously, whereas Zoom is usually, like, people are taking turns, sort of, you know, doing their thing, so it's a different type of experience, and I'm also, you know, I have to say, I haven't really spent a whole lot of time in Loops, so I'm looking forward, you know, to getting involved with that, so… so yeah, that's… that's pretty much it. You know, I really was impressed with what I saw today, though, and the, that piece with the… the key, I thought was really, you know, just going in there, it transformed from being in a space that was you know, a social space into, like, being in a piece of artwork. And especially with the audio, it was just really pretty startling. So, Yeah, so that's it, you know, and open it up to… Anybody else to share?

Tommy Mintz

Do you have a comment you want to share?

Sahar Moussavi

Yes, I want to mention that, the, dancers around the lake, those are GLBs that I used from Sketchfab. I didn't make it myself, because I was new to GLBs, but now I know how to make those dancers. Right now. So, I downloaded the dancers from Sketchfab. If you want to have some free GLVs, you can just search Sketchfab and, download from there. But the other GLVs are made by myself.

Tommy Mintz

Very cool, thank you. Oh, Renata has another comment. Renata!

Renata Janiszewska

Yeah, I just… I wanted to add that there are so many artists Projects inside Loop that you can explore, and… I really encourage you to just go visit the exhibition that's on now, that cha showed us, the desktop, the approach. You just have to go to Loop. Onland.io to get to the homepage, but in addition, please, I'm trying to encourage people to use the Louise Bourgeois Sunday SALON as a space. It's there for us 24-7. The only times that we'll… you won't… won't use it privately is on the Sunday times.

Renata Janiszewska

But we can, like, we can use it. You can go meet a friend there, you can bring your work to show them, you can socialize in the space, and for those people who are shy, having an avatar instead of being on screen is… can be very liberating. So, I just wanted to… mentioned that the loop menu item on the Expressionism homepage. Takes you directly to the portal that leads into the LBSS, as we like to call the Louise Bourgeois Sunday SALON.

Tommy Mintz

Very cool. And, before we… throw everything open to your questions that you have written down, like I do. There was… A starter question that I was asked to pose to everybody, which is, can you think of ways that Techspressionism and loop can get more connected to one another? So with that, as a question, I'd like to throw it open to anybody who has questions for any of the Artist presenters today, and…. You're welcome to use the… there's the react button on the bottom, you can click that, and then hit the raise hand, and I'm happy to call on you, or you can just unmute yourself. One of my… oh, Cynthia, go ahead, before I start on my list.

Allen Hirsh

First of all, I'd like to say this is very… interesting and fascinating, and I thank all those who have presented. But I would like to ask SAHAR a question. She mentioned that the GL… the very sculptural, lovely GLB that is within her verse has a story behind it. Could you tell us that story?

Sahar Moussavi

Just, site? That I made was, actually, generate… I generated it from the actual picture of the historical site in west of Iran. And yes, it's a pre-Islamic building, still exists, some of the ruins exist, and I think I have told you the story before. And, I visited the site twice, and it's, very beautiful and, has many stories behind it, like, this, round. Lake. It was, kind of, like, the whole land was holy for Iranian people, pre-Islamic period, and when kings wanted to go to wars.

Sahar Moussavi

They usually, get out of the horse, get down, and, bear, walk. Barefoot to the lake and throw their crown into the lake. And during, Arab invasions, Muslim invasions to Iran, and all people, like, around those, area, they just threw all the treasury and gold and coins, and mine everything precious into that lake. So, not Mongols… Mongols, no Arab Muslims, they cannot reach and, possess the treasury and gold and crowns and anything. So, at the bottom of the lake.

Sahar Moussavi

Lies a huge amount of Treasures, jewelries, golden, golden crowns of different, different kings, and the mysterious part is that no diver can dive into the… Lake more than 10 meters. And… and if someone drowns, The body doesn't come up, like, it just goes down. And, it is told, I don't know, it's the fifth chakra of the Earth. So, during, March, or, yeah, March, Reiki healers usually sit around the lake and meditate. And during that time, the gates of the… because it has a very… the site has a very big gate.

Sahar Moussavi

The gates are closed to people, so the Reiki healers can meditate and do their stuff. I was going to put some meditate… some GLVs in meditation pose, but I changed them with dancers, so… so that's the story, and many famous kings pre-Islamic period were crowned in the throne of Solomon. Also, there was some stories that actually Solomon himself was a resident of that place, so that's why the name comes, Throne of SALON, the Suleiman, so is SALON. And, also with his Queen. And, another story is, that, the, the permanent, Zoroastians Fire, which still is, burning for 5,000 years.

Sahar Moussavi

Originally was placed in Sloan of SALON, and then removed to… part of it is, of it is now in India by, Persian, Zoroastrians, and part… one part is still burning in Yass City. So, they never let the fire to get off. So, that's the story of Thorn of SALON.

Allen Hirsh

Thank you for sharing that.

Sahar Moussavi

Thank you. Thanks for asking.

Tommy Mintz

Very cool. SAHAR. Really fascinating story that, makes me think about this use of…. Digital space, which can be anything. To represent a very particular thing, and how we still get that… or place, particular place, then the energy from that place, you say it was, like, the fifth chakra of the world, but it's, like, now represented in this virtual space, in a way, and I'm just fascinated by that sort of energy transfer, or mental space transfer that…

Sahar Moussavi

When we were asked to create our verse, the first thing came to my mind was Throne of Solomon. Like, that's so cool. I want to make that in my verse.

Tommy Mintz

Very powerful. And are you planning on developing it further, or is that a complete project at this point? How do you feel about it?

Sahar Moussavi

I still wanted to make changes and edit it, but I didn't dare. Because if it crashes. I have to make it all over again. So I… I checked XR Editor, and I still… cha, I still have access to XR Editor, but I really didn't dare to. Make any changes.

Tommy Mintz

Sahar Moussavi

Tommy Mintz

Thank you.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Copy. You can export one first.

Unattributed

Cha:): Yeah.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Sport the whole thing first. Yeah, you'll be okay. Just ask one of us, we'll walk you through it.

Sahar Moussavi

Ariel Baron-Robbins

But I will say, it's pretty amazing from going to not… that's what I said in the comments, from going to not, you know, being able to make a GLB to this, you know, and that's one thing I forgot to highlight, was that you know, sort of the kind of educational sort of aspect of Loop, which is… I didn't want to, like, recreate this hierarchical, like. Way of educating, because, like, in my mind, as a professor, my… I would have just loved, loved to have like, all the students learn from each other, you know, and… and I, you know, could, you know, give them projects, but then they could, you know, also participate in a… this is, like, the, like, you know, wonderful… feeling that you were, you know, like, mythical, classroom, right? Which doesn't really exist. I'm sorry. Not at least at the colleges I've gotten to teach at. It's… it's… you have to have this hierarchy, even if you don't want it. So, like, I was like, well, this… I definitely don't want… Loop to be like that, so… The best thing about it is that it's not student-teacher at all, you know? These are all adults. You know, we're all adults, you know, and we're all learning from each other, nobody… some of us have particular knowledge about GLBs, or how to export this, and then we can help each other, and it's all very, like, From individual, and from peer-to-peer, and a very horizontal learning space. One thing that we always do, and this is probably what I'm doing instinctually, is that when anybody mentions anything that is, like, an article, or a YouTube video, or a new program, or something.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Is… usually it's in the cha. Even if it's not, I'll write it in the cha, because I want… so they might just say it in passing, but I want everyone else to know about it, right? So I just, like, go online really quickly, find the app, put it in the chat, and then we also do that in the Discord. So that way, during the critiques, if people want to go back and look through the notes, and they're like, somebody mentioned this amazing interview or article, their app.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

They can find it always written down. And that's kind of, like, another way of… of doing this. Because it's hard during a feedback session sometimes to take notes. So we kind of think about it as, you know, that's one of the things, like, one of us is there to kind of guide the critique, but our time there, or… or introduce a critique game, or just let people talk, but one of the things that we do there is, you know, we do contribute to critiques sometimes, but a lot of times we're just recording things down in the Discord, in the cha, and stuff like that. So there is an educational kind of thing, but it's coming from these, like… I always thought it's really interesting, we have People from all over the world, right? And each of them have their own little resources that they draw from.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Very, very, very different, you know? From somebody that's in the east coast of the United States. So that's also, like, a thing that I think is really fun.

Tommy Mintz

Very cool. Very cool. Cynthia, did you have another question, or just…

Allen Hirsh

I do, but I think Roz had her hand up earlier. And I'd like her to go… let her go first.

Roz Dimon

Oh, thanks. Yeah, thank you for this amazing presentation. You know, it… it really brings me back to the early days of digital art, where we were doing pixels when we didn't quite know why they were appearing in our work or whatever. Early, early days. So exciting, because it was a voyage where you didn't quite know where you were going, but you needed each other to get there. And I haven't really felt that in a long time, and it's just so fun to witness it. It's really, really exciting. One of my questions was, is the idea to make a, it seems to me it's probably already answered, but the idea is to make a new work of art, as explorative and new, Siberiana was. It was fabulous, great. We were actually making galleries and just showing our work, both digital and even things that preceded digital, like my information paintings was in my gallery. But we were just putting up things we'd already made, and just making the space was fascinating.

Roz Dimon

Inviting people into it. But in your case, I think you're taking it another step where you're really saying, yeah, sure, you can load things you've done, but it seems to me it's the idea is to create something new and a new experience. Is that… isn't that the emphasis?

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Well, yeah, I mean, I think in the… we think about it kind of in two ways, so when, like, the critique starts, you know, just to get everybody to know each other, you know, put up works that you've made before, you know, and then we can give feedback, but at least and cha and I are very different, so I lead critiques, and also… but cha leaves a lot of the critiques. And, so you'd have to also ask him, but I'd like to talk about doing things, like, kind of… bringing in things that are in process.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

You know, and so, bring the things that you already have, but they're in process, because to me, that, you know, the feedback thing goes straight into something that, you know, can be used right away. But the other major thing that happens is after, like, a couple weeks, we talked to them about this XR editor. This XR editor is a program that allows you to create your own verse. So the way that SAHAR created that verse was through this browser-based program that is it was created by the Mudd Foundation, and… and actually, that wasn't there for the first couple years of Loop. For the first couple years of Loop, actually, I think until Carolina's group.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

There was a Lorna Mills group, and if you know who that artist is, you'll sort of get what happened. So the Lourdes Mills group comes in, she's, like, an amazing artist, but she's kind of all over the place, and she's very energetic, makes a lot of work. Her… the people she selected were, like, nuts. Like, they were creating so much work that… and they were putting all this work in… into the rooms, and they were crashing it. Because the thing about these rooms is there's only so much of, like, megabytes and stuff that can be in there.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

And until it crashes. And for people that don't have, like, a good Wi-Fi connection, or not being on the best computer, like, they just couldn't participate at all, because everybody kept stuffing all sorts of crap into the room, and then crashing it. So, we… I ended up going… desperately to… The Mudd Foundation, who is the people that actually, like, maintain it, so that's the people that we pay money to, I paid money to, and now the museum makes money to, for, like, our rent.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

And, I said, we gotta do something, because, you know, the art is cute. We keep giving them rooms, and they keep crashing them. And so he… he decided to give them the way to create their own rooms. Right? So they could each have separate verses that they would be able to… and they would also be able to kind of judge how much they were putting in, in the megabytes, you know, all of that sort of stuff. And the grant that we got actually… we got the grant so that people… it's a compression grant, so that people could upload something that's way too big and way too heavy, and it would actually auto-compress it for them.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

So, like, that we wouldn't have those issues. But, so who is hosting Loop? I just see that. It is the Mudd Foundation. It is the Mud.foundation, so it's a non-profit, and it is… it is created by them, so the… we're not on anyone else's metaverse. We're not on a corporation's metaverse. We don't… anything like that. Yeah, so we're, like, kind of safe from something that can happen to, like, a spatial or to the other one that everybody was using, I forgot. But, there's a lot of them that kind of went down. But anyway, but we're okay with that, and the Mudd Foundation was created by an artist for artists, and I have a very close connection to them, and they're also hugely funded by, like, the Knight Foundation and other arts grants.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Let me answer the question? I forgot what the question was, but anyway…

Roz Dimon

Oh, just that it's… you talked about it, it seems to be very process-oriented, and that makes sense, where things.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Roz Dimon

Happen in.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Oh, yeah.

Roz Dimon

With others, with other artists, and that's.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

So we give them this, like, great tool, right? And then, of course, like. Almost no artist comes into Loop, like, making metaverses. Some of them do. But very few of them don't. And actually, one thing that we want to make sure is that we make it really easy. So it's like, someone doesn't even want to mess with this, like, online creator browser thing. We have somebody who's like, I am just learning how to upload stuff and move it around. I want them to be there, right? I don't want them to be excluded.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

You know, so, I also want there to be something, like, if somebody's super complex, I think Michael Lewy is here. But, like, Michael Lewy knows a lot about these systems, yeah. And so, if somebody's super complex, I want them to also, like, not be, like, super bored or anything, you know, and be able to make, like. And hopefully we can help them as well. So, yeah. Needs to be both, because I'm tired of people being excluded. And that's also the reason why we look the way we do. We don't necessarily look like this high-tech, futuristic, like.

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Digital art space with, like, you know, we look a little dorky. And we are a little dorky. And I feel like there's room on the internet for both types of spaces, you know?

Roz Dimon

It's exciting, thanks. It's been a really, interesting salon. Thanks, all of you.

Tommy Mintz

Any other questions? Lingering in people's lists here, minds. Is there a meet and greet on September 6th in the Louis Bourgeois? Society space, Renata that… We want to announce on the recording?

Renata Janiszewska

Sure, it's 12 to 2 p.m. Eastern Time. The link to get in is on the Techspressionism website. In the menu, simply click on the word loop. And with another click, you'll be inside the Louise Bourgeois Sunday SALON, and you'll have an avatar. You don't need to worry about making one, you'll be assigned one. There's also another session from 5 to 7 p.m. Eastern Time, again, Sunday, September the 6th. Look forward to seeing you.

Tommy Mintz

Awesome, awesome, thank you. Any last comments? Applause for everybody, before we close the recording? I think we've been on for, A full meeting here, and this has been one. I hear somebody. Go ahead.

Bob Prata

Cynthia had a question, Tommy. Cynthia DiDonato.

Tommy Mintz

Thanks, Bob. Cynthia, did we skip your last question? I'm so sorry.

Allen Hirsh

That's okay. I was just gonna ask how the Loop participants have felt have been affected by their participation, and what this effect produced in their work outside of Loop.

Tommy Mintz

Great question. SAHAR or, Carolina? Renata? Any of the artists?

Ariel Baron-Robbins

Tommy Mintz

Galina Shevchenko

Unattributed

Cha:): Yeah, definitely, I think…

Galina Shevchenko

I'm too, GALIMA here.

Unattributed

Cha:): Yeah, definitely. You are a very good example, GALINA. How about you? Nice to see you.

Galina Shevchenko

Oh, my…

Tommy Mintz

Galina Shevchenko

Yeah, it's so amazing to see, like, former loopers, and, Ariel, and cha and Carolina, and SAHAR, I know of SAHAR as a looper, but, like, we connected being on two shows together, without knowing each other, but knowing each other through the loop. And, the Loop Metaverses… That's so incredible. I already had… three different gallery shows, with those loop metaverses. And also, thanks to the expressionism and connection with Renata. I had one of my loop metaverses in Every Woman Biennial, after I presented my work here at that Expressionist SALON in July of last year, and meeting Aaron. So it's… it's the artists networking outside and inside of the internet, like, constant collaboration, and I just had a show in Venice that Renata and Ariel and SAHAR in, because I see everybody's work. It's… it's incredible. It's… and thank you so much, guys.

Galina Shevchenko

Thank you so much, Ariel, for providing the space, non-judgmental, beautiful, blooming, digitally, and to cha and Renata for the Sunday SALONs that I try to go to when I have time, but it's… it's incredible. Thank you so much. It's such a great… like, such an amazing opportunity to be a part of. Yup. Well, just the…

Tommy Mintz

Well, that's great to hear, GALINA. Thank you for… sharing your experience,. Positivity. Any other comments before we close it out today? This has really been a wonderful SALON. I'd like everybody to give yourself a round of applause, and thank all the artists for, participating. And… we will have another salon. Colin, do you want to announce The next date for next expression in the SALON?

Colin Goldberg

Sure. So our salons are held on the first Thursday of each month at noon Eastern time, so the October salon will actually fall on October 1st. And that's gonna be dedicated to the co-working, Community and group and sessions that we have, here with the Techspressionism community, and you can find out more about that on our homepage. So yeah, you know, I encourage anyone interested to come on by, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the artists who've been participating in that.

Colin Goldberg

You know, are gonna… are gonna share. And I just really wanted to thank, you know, Ariel and the rest of the group from Loop. It's really been awesome, and I think we can come up with some, you know, pretty interesting Collaborative ideas. I'm already, like, thinking about all sorts of different things, over the course of this session, you know? Like, I really like the blind jurying. I think that's something that, like. We could bake into some sort of an interesting exhibition where it wouldn't… it would just be something non-traditional, you know? And I think that also this idea, like, I've often talked about this idea of social sculpture, which I was introduced to by Joseph Nakvatal, who's one of the People involved in Techspressionism early on, and I think Loop is also a social sculpture in a similar way, in that, you know, it's a piece of artwork, and it's formulated by people, you know, engaging in various activities, and very open-ended, so I think there's, you know, there's a lot of possibilities for some interesting stuff to happen.

Colin Goldberg

So, once again, I'd like to thank all of the artists and presenters and… Loopers, and to expressionists involved in this, this salon. And, yeah, I look forward to attending, you know, these, some of these Sunday sessions. I'm gonna be camping with my daughter this Sunday, so I'm gonna have to skip this next one, but after that, I definitely am gonna, gonna pop in and check it out, so… I'm very excited about that, and Yeah, that's about it. So, we do have, traditionally a, a after-party after the recording stops in each salon, where people can stay on if they want, and… you know, come up with some ideas about, you know, future salons, or just kind of, you know, have a, A pseudo-advisory board meeting. So instead of having an advisory board, we have, an after-party, because that's how we roll here. So, with that, I will close, and thanks all for attending.

Colin Goldberg

I'm going to stop this recording in 3, 2, 1, and…