Pool at SOMArts' NightLight & Projected Personae

Two-channel generative video installation by Fernanda D’Agostino at SOMArts Cultural Center’s Projected Personae and Night Light: Multimedia Garden Party

MEDIATE presents Fernanda D’Agostino’s “Pool,” that sets out to pair memory to place, drawing on the ancient mnemonic devices of the “Method of Loci.” A central image is a choreographer, Linda Johnson, submerged underwater, looking directly back at the viewer as she contracts, glides, tumbles, and hovers in a watery amnion of blue. Interspersed are images of a full moon; a book that has caught fire; salmon swimming upstream; a burning house; botanical frescoes from the House of Livia ; and the words \”Ars Memoriae.\” The two channel generative video uses MAX/MSP Jitter to combine and change, resulting in an open-ended and shifting meaning. The idea is to create an analogue for the idiosyncratic layering and juxtaposition that occurs in dreams, memories and stream of consciousness. ‘Pool’ is part of the Projected Personae exhibition that investigates the construction of a persona—the aspect of one’s character that is presented to or perceived by others—as a central theme, postulating that through fictitious and often time-based identities, we may interrogate the assumptions and beliefs that surround us.

SOMArts presents Night Light and Projected Personae, curated by Justin Hoover and Elia Vargas. SOMArts’ exhibition programs are generously supported by the Community Arts and Education Program of the San Francisco Arts Commission and The San Francisco Foundation. Night Light: Multimedia Garden Party’ is SOMArts’ site-specific luminous art installations, live music and performances, and digital and cinematic projections by more than 50 artists.

For more info see SOMArts eventpage

 

Since 1984 Fernanda D’Agostino has completed twenty-five public commissions and fifteen solo exhibitions, many incorporating moving images in novel ways. Her work has been recognized by a Bronson Fellowship, a Flintridge Foundation Fellowship, Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation, and state fellowships in Montana and Oregon. Fernanda is a pioneer in the use of outdoor video projections in public art. “Celestial Navigations,” video projections on a monumental navigational instrument, is sited at Seattle International Airport. “Living Calligraphy” was recently screened at the Pompidou/Metz in France.Her 2011 interactive video installation, “Pool,’ was exhibited as part of the Bronson Foundation’s 20 Year Anniversary Exhibition, since then video from the project has screened at Cyberfest St Petersburg, Russia, NMinutes Festival Shanghai, and Video Guerrilha, Sao Paulo. Recently Fernanda was a visiting artist at the American Academy of Rome to begin development of “The Method of Loci,” a multi-chambered interactive video installation; she was also in residence at Can Serrat International Artists Center in Barcelona, Spain where she projected video from “The Method of Loci” on the cliffs and ruins of Mont Serrat. “The Method of Loci” was exhibited in its entirety at The Art Gym in Portland in Fall 2013. Fernanda is currently adapting work from “The Method of Loci” for a digital dome exhibition in Sao Paulo.