---
type: salon
number: 61
title: Open Studios
date_recorded: 2023-01-18
date_published: 2023-01-19
video_id: axa3_RqLoWw
url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw"
duration_seconds: 5529
moderator: Colin Goldberg
speakers:
  - name: Verneda Lights
    country: null
    start: 114
  - name: Tim Fabian
    country: null
    start: 414
  - name: Michael Warner
    country: null
    start: 870
  - name: Cynthia Beth Rubin
    country: null
    start: 1270
  - name: Tommy Mintz
    country: null
    start: 1685
  - name: Malavika Mandal Andrew
    country: null
    start: 2020
  - name: Michael Pierre Price
    country: null
    start: 2436
  - name: Cynthia DiDonato
    country: null
    start: 2761
  - name: David Bloom
    country: null
    start: 3026
  - name: Sahar Moussavi
    country: null
    start: 3733
  - name: Renata Janiszewska
    country: null
    start: 3884
  - name: Greggory Hill
    country: null
    start: 4486
transcript_source: whisper-large-v3
languages: ["en"]
---

## Colin Goldberg [00:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=2s)

Hello and welcome to the Techspressionist Salon Number 61. My name is Colin Goldberg and I will be moderator this evening. Today is January 18th, 2023. And today, basically, we have an open studios type format, which is open sharing. Where, you know, anyone here tonight is welcome to share what they're working on or recent work or even some old work, since most of it is going to be new to us anyway. So, and screen sharing is encouraged.

David Bloom has volunteered to help out with some of the timekeeping duties. So at this point, we're going to. Limit the sharing to five minutes and, you know, we will get this going. So I have asked anyone that wants to share to use the raise hand tool, which is under reactions on the bottom of the zoom window. And if anyone is in here now and hasn't raised their hand and wants to share, go ahead and jump on in. I'm going to call on the artists in the order that the they're showing up in the chat. And then I'm going to call on the participants panel, which is, I think, the order they raise their hands in. So, again, I would encourage you all to not be shy and share your work. This is going to be posted to the expressionism YouTube channel, which is accessible at YouTube dot com slash expressionism.

And with that, I will get us going with our first artist who is for NATO. For

## Verneda Lights [01:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=114s)

NATO. Like. And if you don't mind when you first come on, this goes for everyone. If you could just let people know also where you're dialing in from, that would be, you know, I think of interest to everyone else in the room, too. Yes. Thank you, Colin. Good evening, everyone. My name is Renata Lights and I'm zooming in from Port Royal, South Carolina, part of the Carolina Lowcountry in the heart of the Gullaheechee Nation of the South Carolina. Right. And I'm from the South Carolina Lowcountry. So today I'm happy to be able to share some of my most recent works. And it's titled Caterpillar's Dream. And it is a.I.

Venture. It tells a story in the story that it tells is that the conversation is a conversation going on between a young girl and a butterfly. Starts off with her in a field of flowers and the butterfly sitting on a petal. And they're talking. And then she goes home and night falls and a caterpillar attaches to a leaf and starts evolving into a butterfly in the formation of the chrysalis.

So within it, you see the various manifestations of how the butterfly is. And then you see the butterfly dreams itself to be and to be becoming. But then as the butterfly forms, it becomes transformed and co-mingled, mixed DNA wise with the human. And at the end, there's both human and butterfly. So then we have the paradigm. Is the caterpillar dreaming of becoming a butterfly and a human? Or is the human dreaming of becoming a butterfly and a caterpillar? So I'm going to share the screen and the story for you.

Can you see? Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That's it. Beautiful. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you, Vernada. So I think maybe what we'll do as far as comments or discourse goes is we'll have everyone do their presentations, and then we can sort of open it up for people to ask the artist who presented questions sort of at a group level, just so it doesn't get sort of backed up. So thank you, Vernada.

All right. Great. Next up is Tim Fabian.

## Tim Fabian [06:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=414s)

Hi, I'm Tim Fabian. I live in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is about 35 miles north of Pittsburgh. I'm new here. And in fact, I'm new entirely to the notion of expressionism. I was introduced to this idea about a week ago by a fellow that I know online who's from LA. It's the magic of being connected to people online.

And so this notion of technology and using it as a means of self-expression really caught my eye. I'm a photographer. I was a photographer for a living for a long time. And then 2007, 2008 happened, and I had to get a job. So I got a job for a while, but I've retired a couple of weeks ago, and I'm ready to get back into photography. I've got my first show scheduled. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and show you a little bit of what I And let's see. This is what I'm doing.

And this is the group of photographs that I have reserved out for a show. And these are created using a camera that has a full frame chip, and then they're loaded into an application, called GigaPan Stitch. I don't know if you know anything about what a GigaPan is, but you can look that up, G-I-G-A-P-A-N.

And it's designed to create extremely large images that are then uploaded to the GigaPan site. And the GigaPan site is hosted at Carnegie Mellon University. And it's hosted on a couple of supercomputers. And in spite of the fact that these might be made of hundreds or thousands of images, the audience can zoom and fly through them. I got kind of bored with that aspect of it and put it aside for a while. But now in my retirement, I've decided to pick it up. And instead of feeding it regular information photographed in a grid, it's a robotic tripod head. And it photographs in a grid, and then it puts that grid together and gives you these images. So I've decided to try to feed the Stitch app discordant information to see what happens when it tries to stitch the stuff together. And then I crop what I think is a meaningful visual statement out of that and present it as if it was an individual photograph.

And as you can see, there are a variety of these things. Right? So I'm seeing just your folder on your desktop. I don't know if there's multiple windows. You might be sharing just a particular image. I don't know if there's a particular folder. Oh, OK. But I see a lot of small thumbnails right now. OK. Well, I'm trying to open individual images. Let me see if I can figure that out. You might need to stop your screen share and then reshare. Yeah.

And then maybe if you share your full desktop versus a specific window, that might work. Well, that was what I thought I was doing. But, yeah. Let's see. How about that? There you go. There's an individual image. There we go. Nice. OK. So and that's actually this small town that I live in Pennsylvania. But each of these rectangles that you see in the grid is an individual full frame 35 millimeter image that the software has then tried to put together. And I'm tilting the camera and moving around and doing odd things to try to fool it. But that's not the case. I'm not fooling it so much that it feeds me gibberish. Sometimes it will feed me gibberish. So it depends on camera angle and exposure and subject matter and all sorts of things, how it blends itself together.

Tim, you're at four minutes, Tim. I'm sorry. I'm at four minutes? OK. So what I really am concerned, what I'm really, my question is, I'm new here. What do you guys think about this? Do you want to flip through a couple if you're able to, just so we could see some multiple? Multiple images? Before your time is up.

Let's see. Here is what it looks like. Oh, that's not sharing, is it? Where am I? Screen share. Well, all right. Here's another one. This one's done at night. This is fairly cropped. And one of the things that I like about this sort of thing is that it's sharp up close and also they have this sort of infinity point. And the way that the software sees and stitches the images together sort of varies a great deal on what I'm shooting. My question to you guys is, does this seem to fit into what you think of as being Techspressionist in nature? Yes. Absolutely. You know. I see Tommy nodding his head. Is Lee Day?

We're at five and a half minutes now. Okay. Are either Lee on? I feel like Lee is on. I understand we're keeping questions and comments to the end, but that's what I'm doing. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. What Tommy was saying was that there's a couple other artists in the group who also work with sort of, you know, the I know Lee Schnaiberg calls it like rogue, rogue pano, like kind of using pano shooting and stitching and sort of like a hack, hacking type way. There's a couple people in the group that are involved medium wise, you know, in sort of a similar way. Yeah. Lee Day is another one. But yeah. You know, if you'd like post any links, Tim, to your, you know, if you have a website or social media accounts into the chat window, yeah. Yeah. Definitely paste that into the chat if you're new here and also if you're not new here like Verena definitely, you know, paste in you know, your website or anything that you want.

So people who are on the zoom are able to you know, click through and see some more of your work. Thanks. Thank you. Awesome. But yeah, you know, and, and welcome. Tim, you know, so to me, like the, the cornerstone of this is like, is you're a Techspressionist when you say you are. So if you identify with the idea, then that's a qualifier. That's really the only qualifier as far as I'm concerned. I'm really excited to find a like-minded group geographically as diverse as this. This is great. Cool. Awesome. Welcome. So, and yeah, for everyone else, if you're not actively sharing, please mute yourselves so we can keep everything copacetic.

All right. So the next artist up is Michael. That's me? Yeah. Michael or the other Michael? Michael Warner. Oh,

## Michael Warner [14:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=870s)

Okay. Okay. Well, I'm zooming in from Bayshore, Long Island. I'm a 40 plus year ago transplant from the Adirondacks in upstate New York. So a lot of my early photography when I got my first serious camera back in the 70s was nature, was, you know, trees and such forth. So I'm just going to jump around really quickly here to see if I can get this working.

Share screen. Start now. Okay. All right. So that was one of my earliest. I work with some doctors just like others on here. So that was one of my earliest images taken out in Missouri with a range finder camera that I acquired from someone. I'm not sure who it was. But, you know, just a lot of, a lot of this.

So, I'm going to show you a little bit of this. Now I'm still, you know, focused on natural subjects. But I've gotten into more abstract, you know, playing around with abstract ideas. I wanted to be an artist when I was younger, a painter. I was never very good at it. And when I get back on the screen, you look at the guy behind me, that's my Van Gogh, is my, my muse, I guess.

So. You know, I take shots that I've done of different subjects. This is actually a display of wood and such forth over at a park near me, which I took and did a composite, flipped over. I work mostly with my phone. I mean, I do have other cameras, but of course, you know, the phone is, is more convenient.

So coming up with just, just no particular vision, just playing to see what kind of images emerge from different experimentation. So this is getting back towards the original shot. So this is kind of the progression or the evolution of the image. Let's see. I also, I know I missed out on the AI thing, but this, this is my first, my first and really only foray into creating imagery through AI.

This is actually a combination of several images that I created. Plus one of my, my photographs superimposed over it, which I call the city of destruction. From Pilgrim's Progress. And so this is a lot of the playing around I did with that. I know I'm just jumping around here, but, you know, as you can see, as I scroll down here, I do many different iterations of various images to try to get, you know, whatever the, the final product is, it's whatever appeals to me. And so, it's not a, you know, it's not, it's not that I'm saying, okay, what would sell?

What would appeal to the most, most people? But, you know, what, what do I, what can I see? And once I've seen it and captured it, you know, what else is there? Some ICM. So as far as technology is concerned, I mean, you know, photography, photography itself is, is dependent. On technology. So he's been a tech technology based art form. Okay.

Thanks. So anything. On top of that, any applications, any programs that, you know, can help me. Explore what I've captured in, in, in, you know, through the lens. I'm going to just grab onto it and see where it takes me. And of course, this is my, my room. That I'm sitting in right now. As an homage to my, my buddy Vincent there.

So. That's. All right. Thank you, Michael. Yeah. It's good to see. You know, some people that haven't really done a whole lot of. Sharing, you know, at this salon and it's, it's always nice to see new work and new artists involved. So. You know, definitely. Interesting. And, you know, and I, I really definitely see.

Photography, even just straight photography. As you know, completely. You know, I think it's a very. Applicable and valid. To present here in this sort of forum. You know, a big part. I was talking. With a w with someone about this today, how, you know, In the end, you know, we just happened to be here in this time of computers, but.

You know, It isn't really. I mean, part of the whole idea behind Techspressionism is that technology is a continuum and it isn't like. Like right now computers it's. That markedly different from when. Other new technologies came into the hands of artists like the camera. And there was, you know, pushback from people saying, you know, this is art it's the end of art. All that kind of same conversation that happens seemingly with every new wave of technology. So.

So here we are. And next up is Cynics. Cynthia, Beth Rubin.

## Cynthia Beth Rubin [21:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=1270s)

Okay. I think I'm ready. So I had my phone ready to time, but it's not timing. Okay. So shoot. I'm trying to find the get to the play button and Zoom doesn't want it. Okay. So this is where I left off. So I'm going to go really quickly here in the beginning. These are the last time I presented, we were talking about photography and I talked about using the plankton imagery and mixing it with galaxy imagery actually, and drawing back on top of it. So here's a sequence that I did. The one on the upper left was the first one, which I really hated actually, because it kind of reminded me of Chagall, which wasn't my intention. And I just couldn't stop. I just couldn't stop seeing the Chagall ceilings. And then the one in the bottom was the next one where I got it printed out and I drew and added a lot of colors.

And then on the upper right, I did my thing of adding some text to it and changing the colors dramatically. So I'd like to hear from people in these series, which one they kind of respond to the most. Then I started doing a whole bunch of little ones. I had a chance to be in a Miami F art fair exhibit that Odetta Digital was organizing and the pieces had to be 10 by 10, which was incredibly liberating for me. So I started doing this combining of the same Hebrew manuscript that I'd been working with and the plankton and some seaweed. I actually used a teeny little bit of AI with Dolly, but I don't kind of enlist that because it was all obliterated. I mean, everything Dolly did was useless for me, except for stimulating my ideas.

And then one of the students working in the lab at the University of Rhode Island sent me this image of a splitting, I can't say it, dino-siphosis. And it was actually right in the middle of splitting. He thought it was really cool. So I tried to put it into the galaxy while I was working on the series. And you can see, I showed you the initial drawing and then I got it out and I drew on it some more, which has become my process. So here's a whole bunch of them. And are you seeing all of these? Because I'm not in my view. I have my face here. We are. Yep. Yeah. Okay, great. Because my own face is over a lot of them. And so I kept going with this, printing out, drawing on them, doing variations.

And here the guy is again, because at this point, a call for the calendar at the University of Rhode Island. Came out, but it said holiday cards. So I picked this and I sent this image in because, you know, it's like red and green and stars. And I thought, fine, they're going to love it. But then in the end, it turned out it was for calendar. And I presented at lab meeting the day it was due. And we had a misunderstanding.

I understood that they were pointing the wrong way from the feedback I got from the lead scientist. And I did that and I got the idea. And I had the idea to one of the group of people in the room, and I had the idea to like a life like that. And I did in the end, I did the same thing. I did the same thing to the two of them. And I did the same thing to the first one. And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to the last one. And I did the same thing to the last one. Of them no the whole year so this was like a real interesting thing for me calendar by itself okay so this is where I am we're four minutes right now okay yeah and I'm almost done so this is where I am right now this is one of the images that I've worked on and I actually got it printed larger 20 by 20 and I had it pointed downward but then I started to look at it going the other way and I actually sent it to karen for what she's doing going the other way and so a little bit of feedback is maybe they can go either way and now I have another version of it printed without any drawing on it that I'm about to go into and flip it completely the other way so here I am I mean this is the way I love it and I love personally the fact that the diatoms and the circle in the hebrew manuscript that comes from cairo from 1008 it's the largest known full copy of the bible and it's in saint petersburg library and the splitting dino whatever it is obviously I could I couldn't use the manuscript in the piece that went on the library on the calendar that had to be more culturally neutral for that so that's where I am now and I'm kind of tempted I have more of these printed out I'm tempted to just keep going and drawing on them and seeing how different I can make each of them so and we're a little bit over pardon we're a little over five minutes now okay I really did my best okay great thank you everybody I'm looking forward to what people have to say and I will all right you might say I will stop the share first and then mute myself thank you and if you've had anyone that's shared michael if you could if you're able to lower your hand also that would be good just so you're not in the lineup anymore and this is something that I just remember that Davo does and I think it's something that is a really good idea is if you guys have any questions put them in the chat and then at the end of everyone's presentations I can kind of like zoom you know scroll back through the chat and see if there's any questions in there that way you know you can log your question while you're while you're viewing the presentations and you know if you have any questions for any of the pre the artists who presented previously just put them in the chat I'll scan through those first so that way you know I know a lot of times it's hard to think back to like what the first person did when we're at the end so that's kind of a good way to do it so all right next up is tommy

## Tommy Mintz [28:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=1685s)

Hi thank you let me just try to get cynthia and anyone else that hasn't put a link in please paste your links into the chat so the other participants can see more of your work if they like hold on one second I think I need to tap this button here I think I need to tap this button here I'm gonna be showing some very recent work this is a little bit older so for people who haven't seen my work before what I do is I take a sequence of pictures and then use a program that I wrote to compare them for areas of difference and create a time lapse collage so here's another example of that here's something called an alpha channel that is the areas of difference that are layered on top so this is what I've been doing for a number of years now both are in two ways.

One is I'll take a sequence of pictures and then run it through the program. And the other is I'll run the program live while taking the pictures. And so I'd like to show you what I just presented in Rochester. This is at Maker Faire Rochester. If anybody's ever been to Maker Faire or never been to Maker Faire, I recommend it. So at Maker Faire Rochester, I was presenting this work, which I'm calling automated digital photo collage, which is mirrors and windows after John Sarkowski's exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972, which talks about how every picture is either a mirror, I.e. A reflection of the artist's emotions or a window of information out there onto the world. And I like that sort of metaphor of every picture being us looking through a window. So what I did is I took a Raspberry Pi computer.

I ran my algorithm on it that is actually taking pictures, from four cameras at once. Here we have a hat on top of the Raspberry Pi computer over here that allows four cameras to connect at once. And I was running all four cameras through, oh, here's, I was taking pictures through these wireframe drawings that I made with these 3D pens that sort of seem like a hammer looking for a nail. But I sketched over drawings that I had made with this 3D pen. And then created an armature to hold each camera position so that the viewers would see themselves, and let's see if we get to see the view, see themselves viewed through these armatures in an ever, in a collage that would continually change and be sort of interfered with by that wireframe. And I think of this wireframe very similarly visually to this artifact, this alpha channel that's part of the process.

So I'm going to go ahead and show you a little bit of a picture of the so let me just skip ahead here. So that was Rochester. And now what I just did is I started running the program on a Raspberry Pi computer connected to a webcam that I'm pointing downward at a transparent platform holding some material that I found on the seashore and creating a sort of a recursive collage that's being live generated. Let me see if, yeah. So I stick my hand under here and it'll take a picture. I'll take a picture in a moment and add it to the collage. I move stuff around, getting crazy.

And so this is something I was planning on showing actually next month. I'm not sure if the show is still happening, but this is a close up of that. Oh, no it's not. That's me going around. Oh, and recently, the most recent thing I did to this is added this metal sphere to the arrangement, creating a reflection of the viewer within the image itself. Which I find to be something that I always wanted to include. And this was missing in the live versions. I like to include the viewer in it. And this is a way of doing that once again. So here's, yeah, here's what it looks like from the side. Really, it's just a Raspberry Pi computer over there connected to a webcam pointed down at that platform on top of a monitor. Am I under five minutes?

Because that's all I have to share. And I'm going to I'm going to stop there. How do I stop? You're four minutes and 20 seconds. So you're good. Perfect. Perfect. Well, I'll see the extra 40 seconds. The next person. Thank you for your attention. Tommy, you didn't say where you were from. Oh, my goodness. I'm so sorry. I'm here in New York City. I'm. Yeah.

Thanks. Awesome. And definitely please post a link, Tommy, to your website or anything. Else you'd like in there. Really interesting combination of media. And yeah, that's the 3D pen and has sculptural component added to the work and very different and interesting from what I've seen so far from you. So that's really cool.

All right. Malavika

## Malavika Mandal Andrew [33:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=2020s)

Is now up. Hello. Hello. Hi, everyone. Hi, Colin. Hey, Malavika. Do you want to let everyone know where you're zooming in from? Yeah, I'm Malavika Mandal Andrew from India. And I will be showing today one of my current work I'm doing. But the inspiration I have taken from the. One second. The inspiration I have taken from one of my physical work, which I started during the pandemic time. And the title for the same is V.

Just a moment. I'll share it so that it becomes easy for everyone to understand. Is it visible? Yep. Okay. Let me just see that whether it is scrolling or not. So. So, I'm going to zoom in. Can you see the zoomed image? I'm seeing a window with a folder of small images of thumbnails. Because when I'm zooming through.

Sorry for the. Yes. Sorry. I'm sorry. It's okay. The first one you showed was looked like it was full screen. Yeah, but it is not scrolling. That's the reason. Oh. Gotcha. Still it is same. Now I can see a larger image. Okay. So. This is the work. I have. I did. With the pen and ink. On a handmade paper. And during that time, the title I thought of now, not that time is V.

So during that time, we family were together. And with the available things we were surviving. But related to my materials also, it was a similar thing. With whatever available material like beads, threads. The papers. Whatever available inside my house. I was continuing my creation. So these pieces first.

Two pieces. As it is. What was lying at my place. I just. In between just tucked it. And this third, which is. Elongated triangle that I have cut. And the material itself is also like that. It is made out of waste. So, I mean. It's not. Like how that thing. Even each and every material was important to us. Similarly, these materials also like that. It is created from the waste. The.

Like. The first one is a waste handmade paper made from the paper. And the second one yellowish one is made from the racks. The third one is the leftover piece, but this is an acid free mount board. Now this two side. What you see is the front back, back which when I will scroll maybe you'll understand.

So if I see in the sunlight after doing my pen and ink work I can see the back side as a shadow. So what I wanted to say that each and every part of our life whether it is a back and front if you see is very important and I have used the placement in such a way that we can leave a space, like how we need to leave a space in our life, similarly that. So that is one side and this is the another side.

And if I make all the things together. Is the actual look you can get it so I mean this is not like two this is not two works now from this inspiration I have taken and I've gone to the computer work this is developed on the computer and I have given the name also as for the application I have used this is name as invert this I have given a step here I am using the different layer transparency which is not possible in the physical work to do it in this way so here again three things combined together computer software and my photography is combining so that's how v3 it was over there v3 over here you're over five minutes thank you that's thank you I'll just show the images that's all so that gets come up this is the this is two photographs I have used which is I have the use the expanded free form so the base image is from the church floor which has gone off because of the timing and similarly the extent free form of the image down is also I have used extended which over a period of time how we have transformed like that thank you all right thank you malavika thanks for sharing and it must be what time is it there in india now it's now 4 47 precisely thank you for thanks for staying up late for us I really appreciate it no I got up oh you got up okay there you go all right awesome I see some questions in there so I will come back to those when we open that up for sharing all right so moving along my

## Michael Pierre Price [40:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=2436s)

Last question is what's the present future ofkeurie for this project it's an interesting so as we're looking at it we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line we're going to have to look at it on the line The thumbnail is along the bottom, but I do see. Oh, there we go. Now I see the full screen image. Okay, awesome. So I've been conceptually playing around with a lot of different ideas of painting imagery, playing with AI, and sort of playtesting different ideas.

And one of two inspirations for the set of pieces here, and these are all still very much in the prototype stage. They're nowhere near finished. But I always thought that some of Jackson Pollock's work looked like they could have been trails made from snakes. So I kind of. Played around with that idea of combining painting with snakes with abstract images.

So these next set follow along in that respect. You can even see some of the scales in the imagery, the way that I created it. I played with text, with images, with formulas. So like I said, a lot of this is still very. Very prototypical. But I just thought I would share some of the early work that I've been playing with here.

… Interest me. And this was just something that I was playing with over the last couple of weeks. All right. Short and sweet. Very nice. Thank you, Michael. Thank you. Thank you for sharing those. Yeah, it's interesting to see the diversity of styles across the images. And they're sort of all linked together conceptually with this idea. So it's kind of a different approach than you usually would see where they're stylistically cohesive and then there might be a range of subject matter. So that's, I guess, part of the whole AI aspect of working is you can be very experimental in that way. So yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to see.

All right. So and definitely share your links if you'd like in the chat there. I'll do. Okay. So next up is Cynthia DiDonato. And Malavika, if you could just lower your hand, that'd be helpful. So see everyone. Cynthia, did you want to present? You're muted. Sorry again. It's okay. I'm here. I'm going to share.

Of course it wants a plug-in. Can you see anything? Yeah, I see the, I think your iPad screen.

## Cynthia DiDonato [46:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=2761s)

Yep. Great. Well, first of all, hello, everyone. Good evening. I'm Cynthia DiDonato, and I'm zooming in from North Providence, Rhode Island. I'm about 70. Seven minutes from the Rhode Island School of Design campus and museum, which is always a luxury. This, lately, I have been working intensely with the color red. You might say I'm riffing on red.

Red has been associated with heat, love, anger. So I'm interested in exploring these reds and shapes. And perhaps you can watch. Where the black goes. I started in Procreate. So I'm going to show you a little video that goes very quickly and shows all of the different steps that I took in Procreate. I actually started with a slow shutter image, which is an app on my iPhone. And from there, I took this image and decided to.

Play with it. As you can see, if you look at it, there are different squares within it. And I decided to take it into iColorama, which is another app that I'm very fond of. And I began to play with that image by using some of the filters within the program. And again, this would bring me into another filter and you can see it scatters the black. So I'm very interested in where the black goes. Believe it or not, this came out of that earlier image when I went to a different filter. Then I began to bring in and mix in other images that I have created that are either related to it or not related to it to see what comes of it.

And again, more playing with the image. Here I'm masked. So I've masked out the top section and just had a filter that worked with the bottom third. Again, a different filter that scattered these circular shapes and again through the black in all different areas. And I love seeing what happens with that. And again, here's the black getting thrown in a very different way in this piece. And again, I'm still in iColorama.

Here I brought in another image that was taken from one of the red images where I went black and white and then blended to two images. Same idea here. And you're at four minutes now. Thank you. Here I took it into another area where I was allowed to paint in iColorama and bring those shapes in. And here's just more. And I'll just keep moving through these.

Again, another image was brought in. Earlier image you saw was brought in again. And here I started playing with some of the color, getting oranges in. Here's another piece that was brought in this shape in the middle. So I just keep playing and playing. This is a cold wax piece that I took a photograph of. And then I...

Blended it. Again, more changes in iColorama. Bringing in the line. And then I actually came up with this, which is very, very different. So I don't know where this is going to go. I don't know which pieces I want, but you've seen what I have to offer. Thank you for watching. Perfect timing. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, Cynthia. And definitely paste your website in the chat. And if anyone has any questions, feel free to put those in the chat as well. All right, David, you are up next.

## David Bloom [50:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=3026s)

Okay. I'm going to share and try and share off of the second screen. I'm going to be showing one work of art. Hang on. How do I do this? This is... This painting took... Can everybody see? Yep. This is Vibe GL. This took two and a half years from thought to completion. We're pretty close to that. It's a very massive painting. If you want to call it a painting. It probably weighs about 200 pounds. It's 69 inches wide without the stands. And it's, I think maybe 30, 38, 30, 34 inches high.

I'm going to show you another view of this. This is a front view of the painting. And it has 48 guitar strings, which is one guitar string shy of a full four octaves that you would find in a guitar. Cool. So you can see I just got the cork of a Neodlesian and I'm going to use the hand where I'm going to take the top of the line. And I'm going to take the top of the line. And I'm going to take the top of the line. And I'm going to take the top of the line. And I'm going to take the top of the line. And I'm going to take the top of the line. And I'm going to take the top of the line. And I'm going to take the top of the line.

And then it wraps around. And you can see here that this painting connects to an amplifier. There's electronics in it. So you can, and I have a 30 second video to show that was just taken today. So you can run this through the amplifier. You can use the amplifier as a Bluetooth device. I also got a Boss RC5 guitar looper pedal that also acts as a drum machine. So you can make loops with this and have a pretty cool time. It's not a total music instrument. It's more of a piece of art that allows you to play some music. And it's really a metaphor for vibration with light. You can see here the different, there's LED light that changes colors. And then the stripe colors go from infrared to ultra, to lower wave frequencies, to higher wave frequencies.

And then following the pattern. Let me show another photo here. This is another view. You can see this wasn't just a painting with strings on it. The strings were embedded into the construction of the painting. So the strings actually come through holes here in the middle, one going down to a tuning machine at the bottom and one going up.

And then the other one is an interactive painting. If you see here, it's got these, these are acrylic panels with red and blue sine waves on them. One is black, one is white. These attach mathematically below them so that you can remove them. So if you don't like the sine waves, or you like the way the painting looks this way, you can actually remove those panels. And then if you see that little hole right here, well, I have a close up.

This is a, this is an electronic tuner that's embedded into the painting. So you can use this to tune the strings. It'll show you what notes being played. And I have a video I will try and show you guys. It's 30 seconds. I don't know if you can hear it. No, you might want to just stop sharing and then, you know, reshare. I know when you, when you have the share prompt come up, there's a little checkbox to share device audio. That might have to be checked in order for this sound to come through. I don't know if you want to. Okay, so let me try and reshare this.

Okay. Share screen. Share sound. I see. Okay. It says, all right, let's just try this. No one in my brain. We're... And that's it. Five minutes. Perfect. Yep. Wonderful. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. David. And feel free to paste the link into the chat if you'd like. Okay. All right. And it looks like Sahar is the last artist to have their hand raised if you'd like to share something so far.

And if you'd let us know where you're zooming in from also. Hi everyone can you see my screen. Yep. I cannot see it. Okay. So I'm going to share it to them. And where are you coming in from. Hi, I'm Sahar Moussavi I'm from Iran, but I'm zooming from the Philippines. I want to start sharing but I cannot see my screen myself.

I see. It says screen broadcast right now. Oh, okay. I think something went wrong. Maybe. I don't know. Okay. All right. All right. I think you're muted, Saur. Can you see my screen? No. Oh, I don't know how to share it. If you go to the bottom, there's a little green box that says share screen. Yes, actually, I'm, yeah, but I can't share it. Saur, can you please help me?

I think you're muted again, Saur. Saur? Saur? Are you muted? Which is in a folder somewhere on Google Drive or Dropbox? Oh. I saw it pop up for a second. It just said your screen is being shared, I think, but I didn't see the actual content. Oh, there we go. I think you're, it says you're sharing screen. If you could switch to the window, to the app that you want to share off of. That should probably, I don't know if it'll keep sharing if you switch to another app.

Let's see. Oh, there we go. I can see it now. Video with the play button. Do you want to try to play it, Saur? Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's not playing. I see a still image of a, like a sphere. A sphere with a tree. If you're able to share a link to it to view online, you could always paste that in the chat if we're having some problems.

Looks like it's playing. Somebody has their mic on. Not sure. I think you didn't have my voice. No. I was talking. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But if you're able to share a link to it, Saur, I don't know if it's posted anywhere. No, I didn't post it. No. I didn't post it. But can I share it again? Do we have time?

Sure. If you'd like to give it another try. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. Let me see. It just says. Screen broadcast on it. Okay. I'll just send the app. I didn't share it on social media. So. We saw a picture of round along with the colors of red and all. Yes. I shared some frames. So that was visible. I posted some frames. Yes. I stopped. I shared some frames. But I didn't post it. I posted it. I posted it on social media.

## Sahar Moussavi [01:02:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=3733s)

I don't know if you can see my screen. Yeah. It just says you're sharing screen. And you're in Google. And I see it's still imaged now with the play button. Okay. So I just want to. Okay. So I usually, you know, I put a tree or plant on a screen. But it's my concept for something impossible. That's not reasonable and impossible in reality. But we can do that in digital world or art. So growing a tree out of metal. So I made this piece inspired by recent events in Iran. I put some words in Farsi in my artwork.

Work what you see on top of the tree is zan which means woman and then zendagi life azadi freedom so it's woman life freedom and the music is by sherbin named for freedom which is based on hundreds of tweets and I use just a part of it I will play it for you so we're not hearing any sound yeah we didn't get the audio unfortunately but it is beautiful thank you I will share the link maybe later thank you okay thank you and definitely share a link you know to your Instagram account even if it's not up there that way people can follow you so thanks so much you are thank you okay oh it looks like there's a couple other artists that raised their hand here so renata would you like to share something

## Renata Janiszewska [01:04:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=3884s)

Yes thank you I'm sorry that I was late I had to go out of town or in my case out of village today I'm going to show you a work that I did oh wait a minute sure a work that I did based partly on nature partly on my own drawing and I would say the colors in this work are ice cream colors because the photo that I used for this was an actual photo of the sunset and up here where I'm living on the northern bruce peninsula the sunsets can be seven seconds in length. There's a mandala. And I included that because I wanted to emphasize the totemic quality of some of the imagery. And at the same time, I wanted to reference the water lilies paintings by Monet. I first saw the water lilies in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which is quite a while ago. And then they were in France. I saw them many times at Laurent Geri, which is a room, a gallery specifically dedicated to these water lily paintings, which were done near the end of Monet's life at his garden in his home in Giverny, which isn't very far from Paris.

You can take a train there in, I don't know, maybe an hour and a half. And there's a museum from the house where he lived with his wife near the end of his life. And this is a contemplative room. These water lily paintings are very large. And this video is a one minute quick dip into what the Impressionists did and how they were influenced by photography.

And I'm a product of the internet age. And so this is my view on it. So I'm going to show you a little bit of the! Thank you. Thank you, Renata. And did you compose the audio as well for that piece? Yes, I did. And if I could take one minute, I just wanted to give a shout out to Karen LaFleur. She's curated a show of animations with a number of Techspressionism. Which opens this Saturday afternoon from 3 to 5pm at the Cotuit Centre for the Arts. That's in Massachusetts. And Cotuit is spelled C-O-T-U-I-T.

And the other artists in the show besides Karen are Michael Pierre-Price, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Roz Dimon. Oh, there we go. Yeah, no, I had memory lapse there. Roz Dimon and myself. So that's five Expressionists. And it's going to be projected, the work onto a video wall, which is a new acquisition by the Centre. And we are the first artists to be shown on their video screen, their video wall, which is apparently fairly large. And I just wanted to say what a pleasure it is to be able to show with other Expressionists and to also be acknowledged as Expressionist artists in the titles of the works. So Karen has really been working hard to make this happen. And I wanted to say how much I appreciate what she's done.

Awesome. Thanks so much for sharing that. Can I add that Roz Dimon is also in? I just checked the list. Yeah, no, I mentioned Ross. I think that was where I broke down, but I found her name. Okay. Yeah. Is there a link anywhere? Like, is there information on the show online at this point? Actually, yesterday and today, sorry, Monday and Tuesday were the technical run-throughs. And Karen promised that she would send us all the materials that are available. And I'm sure she's going to do that. And I will be sharing on Instagram. She did already, Renata. I got the information this afternoon, email-wise.

So yeah, haven't gotten around to posting anything, but yeah, so it is, we'll be able to make it available. She may have already made it available online. I don't know. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you guys for sharing that information. And on the Techspressionism site also, I just shared a link to the exhibitions page. And at the bottom of that page, there's a listing of artists curated exhibitions.

So, you know, definitely I'd like to add that show to this page. And any other, you know, shows that any of you have done. The other member artists have put together that aren't listed here, you know, definitely let me know about them and I'm happy to add it. Also on the topic of the site, there is a reading list page that has been updated relatively recently. I'm going to paste a link in the chat to that as well. And that has both the catalog from the show this past summer, but also, an updated listing of books by artists listed in the index.

And you know, again, if there's any additional books that have not included, definitely I would urge you to let me know. So we have Greggory Hill. It looks like Gregory is our last artist in the lineup. And then go into some questions if we have time. Hello. Hello, thanks for the opportunity to talk. Can you hear me?

I'm joining from outside of Cleveland, Ohio. And I build the prints that I create through a program that I've written in JavaScript. And often what I'll do is sketch and I like to sketch in pen and try and kind of work as fast as I can. I used to sketch in pencil and I would find myself editing my sketches more than just kind of letting my mind sort of move forward with whatever was going on. So it's almost I like sketching like this stream of consciousness aspect of it. And then I find myself kind of redrawing the same images over and over. And then I'll move to the computer and I recreate them in JavaScript.

Right. And then. Randomize the code so I can get different variations upon the composition that I create. And so I'll share my screen now. You know, if it's working. What should I click? Everything? Your screen. I'll try again. Yeah, I initially was seeing a folder of images. I think I shouldn't select audio. I think that's the issue. You couldn't hear me, right? I think when you do. Computer audio. It also lets you use the mic. I'll try it again.

Okay, so now can you hear me?

## Greggory Hill [01:14:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axa3_RqLoWw&t=4486s)

Yep, I can hear you and I see the recent work. Okay, so this is just like to give an example. Kind of some of the work that I do. But then most recently I started building upon these sketches that were based on just some sort of geometric patterns that I had in my head. And I did some sketches over and over and over and created this program to rebuild them.

And so here are some different variations. And then off of that, I came up with a kind of a secondary composition. Okay. Which had some similarities, but I refined a little bit and changed a little bit of the composition. And then I recently what I'm interested in trying to figure out how to refine even better is took the two sketches and kind of merged them together and came up with something that gave me a little bit more of the aesthetic feel of my drawings a little bit, a little bit sketchier, a little bit more organic, but still have the geometric patterns.

And so these are some examples of. Where it ended up, and I'm still kind of in the process of formulating the final program for this but I just wanted to show it off a little bit and get some feedback and have a chance to talk about it. And then also I wanted to mention. Either now or later, Colin about a local gallery that's doing a digital art discussion.

In February. Okay. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. We, you know, we definitely, we do these sort of like a little hangout afterwards after the recording ends at seven, I guess we'll stop it's around 705 that'll be an hour and a half, and then that's a good time to, you know, talk about things like that upcoming shows or opportunities, trying to as much as possible reserve the salon time itself for artists to share their work or for discussions. Okay.

That's an interesting point. So. So the other thing I want to kind of talk about is the system the well I don't know about you. And I'm not really an artist. I'm not a facet of the Xhosa creed. I'm not a facet of the Xhosa creed. I'm not a business person. I'm not a business person. On that and then generated jpeg and print it interesting very cool well you know feel free to share any links that you want in the chat so people could check your work out so I think that is all of the artists that had their hands raised to share I'm just kind of scanning back through some of the chat the early chat here to see if there's any questions there's a lot of praise for vernita and here's tim's comments let's see I know there's at least a couple questions in here okay so this is a question I think the first question I'm seeing is from cynthia di donato to Malavika Mandal Andrew cynthia asked how will you display these pieces malavika okay thank you generally it is if it is two-sided I am using a acrylic glass glass box so that they can see both the side but because it is having a transparency so I have to means the person has to hold in the hand then they get the feet so it is both the way for the display purpose it can be kept in a glass box and for getting the field they can open and they can see by hand thank you cool thank you thank you okay next question from Cynthia Beth Rubin and I believe this is directed at michael price asking where is the patterning coming from especially in the image that has the black and white pattern in the lower part below the red that was that was first that was for cynthia okay yes other cynthia hi cynthia yeah the white that was in the lower part was it the white that had the small black marks within it or the ones that had the you know squares within squares I think the squares within squares is a very distinctive repetitive pattern and I loved the combination it reminded me you know I'm not going to say what reminded me I hate that you know what you're thinking so but the juxtaposition of this very painterly and then it felt like a culturally cultural pattern of some kind what we see on fabrics or not that I'm saying you necessarily derived it that way but I'm just curious about why that I think that's a great direction by the way well thank you yeah actually those squares within squares were a brush that is in the program I colorama there are a number of hundreds of brushes there and this particular brush appealed to me and I began to stamp the piece that you saw on the lower half and I'm going to do some more exploration with the brush patterns in like a black and white and maybe work with the red that way it's just so many ways that you can go and I'm having a great time thank you all right thanks thank you okay scrolling through yeah so I mean I'm not seeing any other questions in the chat so I'm gonna open it up there's a question there's a question David Bloom okay I'll be being bombed said for David when you show Vibe GL in a show or museum will you allow people to play it yes oh I wouldn't put it would have to be in some kind of controlled environment but yes I would allow people to play it that's why it was made thanks okay all right any other questions that is it I can make out that it is done on top of a canvas the painting am I right I'm sorry what was your question is it done on top of the canvas the painting so this is the second Vibe that I did the first one was done on a stretch canvas and then we had a cocoon built for it with strings over it and it went inside the cocoon this painting was integrated so there is the three panels and I can pull it up with the stripes on it those are on canvas but the canvas was actually wrapped around plywood and then glued on yes okay because that's why I wanted to have I wanted to have the texture of the canvas but we were going to be drilled we drilled holes in this thing yeah and it was a scary thing to do to do all of that work and then drill holes in it and hope that so each each stripe has three holes drilled in it one for the string to come out and then one above and one and below for the pins and the pins go through that go through the canvas go through the plywood that it's on and actually into a pin block to like a piano to help transmit the sound so everything what everything was integrated it took a long time to design a violin maker helped me design and build it and we continue to refine and reiterate the design even until the very end as we encountered issues thank you thank you I can imagine I just have a comment for david I can imagine you evolving your vibe to the point where when you play it that maybe the canvas might be made electronically sensitive and the painting aspect of it might change in very in accordance with the music being played let's work on the next one it's possible so there is led light that surrounds this and I didn't like how the led light on the first one came out so it took a lot of time there are these little spots with led lights and we had to develop a whole new way a channel we experimented with different types with different manufacturers very different manufacturers so I think it's very important that we have to get the right light that we want and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it in the next year and we're going to have to look at it with his music teaching degree and he's going to be teaching orchestra so he was the one that was messing around with the painting and playing with it and he was actually using the mallets on the painting to make a drum sound too in one of the recordings thank you okay so we're getting right about to the end of our time I actually cynthia do you have a question yeah I just wanted to ask tommy something this latest project you're working on and maybe I missed what you were saying are you using the algorithm with the raspberry pi with this new piece that you showed us tonight yes it's actually an old version of the an interactive one that I just repurposed and set up so absolutely it's running the collage algorithm so we're going to see those collages sometime in the future oh how am I going to present them I mean am I saving the files that it's generating and then presenting them afterwards I haven't thought about that cynthia thank you for asking I will I'll share them with you since you're interested yeah I haven't unloaded that computer yet so all the images this generator just still saved on that little raspberry pi I was actually going to ask a similar question that is you know is the artwork the sort of apparatus that you created incorporating the drawing and space or is it the output or both yeah I was considering it to be the apparatus an interactive sculpture gotcha and that was something they asked about the output boy let's say both a quick follow-up question to that.

Are there, is this part of a tradition of yours that is incorporating a sculptural component into the work or is this a new development? I've been working with the idea of it being interactive in a physical way since the beginning, but this particular sort of sculptural presentation is very new. I just started playing with these 3D pens and started sketching out some sort of armatures and then I realized I could build it out of wire as well. And that actually worked better for this particular piece, but I have all these armatures that I've been building with pens. I didn't show everything that I've been doing with that stuff, but yeah, I think it's part of a larger body.

Interesting. I drew one last interjection. Ami's, concept there reminds me in a very strong parallel to Victor Acevedo work with his, backgrounds that he does with the, what's the guy's name? The famous Buckminster Fuller. And there just, there seems to be like a parallel kind of concept, conceptual nature there that I found very fascinating.

Very cool. Absolutely. There was something that reminded me of Duchamp as well in that piece. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but he hopped into my head when I was seeing you show it with the, you know, the sculptural and sort of looking through the sculpture to create this maquette, very, very compelling, I think.

I'm forgetting the name of the piece. That was two plates of glass that sort of broke on their way to being installed. And then he said, oh, I like that even more. Absolutely. I think about his work a lot, his cultural work. Well, does anybody, somebody shout out the name of that piece, please. Cause it's going to hurt until I hear it. It's like the large glass, the bride, it's in Philadelphia, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's the bride's script there by her bachelors. That's it. That's it. That sculptural piece, Tommy Mintz me of the huge metallic sculpture. And I can't think of the artist's name. It's huge. People have gone to it because they can see themselves in it. The world is warped. You know, the view of the world is warped in it. In Chicago. Yes.

Is it Olafur Elias? I know it's a Chicago bean. I don't know who made that. It's a good, I've been to that sculpture. I'd like to think it's Olafur Elias, but I'm sure it's not. Right? Are you guys talking about the bean sculpture? Anish Kapoor? Yeah. The bean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what, you know, you're having that piece there reminded me of that. It's reflecting environment.

If anybody wants to have some fun, go there. There's a, there's a paint manufacturer called Stuart Semple, or Stuart Stumple out of England. And if you go to his website, he has this giant feud going on with Anish Kapoor about colors because, and whether a color can be patented or not. It's really funny.

Gotcha. All right. Well, I think we are just about at time here. So I'm going to stop our recording momentarily, but I would like to thank all of our panelists here today. All the artists who presented david thank you for your help with the time keeping and you know you're all welcome whoever wants to stick around for a little bit after the recording ends so we can pick a topic for the next salon which has become a little bit of a tradition and also the you know anyone who has any announcements about shows that are coming up or other things like that I know that there was one artist that brought something up as well you know it's a great time to share that information so I will stop our recording in five four three two one and cut