FEMET

2015, Networked Televisions, VHS tapes.

In association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Media Lab, I was asked to create work at the museum's 5000 years of art history and contemporary digital technologies. I chose to consider the museum’s well documented history of under-representing women artists, especially women of color through an interactive installation titled FEMET.

FEMET is part-meditation and part-A/V metaphor for the lives and work of a selection of great women artists on display, or in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. FEMET takes form as interactive installation whereby visitors are able to select and play VHS tapes dedicated to Georgia O'Keeffe, Shirin Neshat (pictured below) , Diane Arbus, Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty, and Artemesia Gentileschi. The piece was created using Max MSP, PD, and found footage.

The women depicted in VHS video tapes are Georgia O'Keeffe, Shirin Neshat, Diane Arbus, Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty, and Artemesia Gentileschi.

The lives of these ground breaking artists were fist sonified. I composed music that reflected their personal and professional plights. Using Max MSP, the compositions were then translated to programmed algorithms that signal-processed selected still images or biographical video compositions. Each video was recorded onto an individual VHS using archival video equipment from the museum.

The installation invited attendees to choose a VHS labeled with the respective artist's name and then play it via VCR to a network of archival pyramid of televisions. 

FEMET, premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Media Lab Expo in 2015.

For more FEMET videos, visit FEMET on Vimeo