Connecticut College’s Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology Presents: [Re]Generation

"How Much Memory is Needed" by Jenny Vogel

The Connecticut College Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology presents their spring exhibition, [Re]Generation, which opens on Jan. 21 and runs through Feb. 21 at Cummings Arts Center.

[Re]Generation exhibitors question the power dynamics that influence technology and culture, and how to influence these dynamics to create a more equitable and inclusive field. The exhibit features the work of Angela Ferraiolo, Asha Tamirisa, Jenny Vogel, and 2019-20 Ammerman Center Visiting Fellow Elisa Giardina Papa. Within the exhibition, hybrid physical and digital systems both reveal and critique the world’s engagement with technology.

Elisa Giardina Papa’s “Technologies of Care?” documents new ways in which service and emotional labor are being outsourced via internet platforms, exploring topics such as empathy, precarity and immaterial labor. Positioned in the center of the gallery as discrete stations, this video work visualizes the invisible workforce of online caregivers.

“The Knife Cuts Two Ways” by Angela Ferraiolo is a playful series of brightly colored videos of repeating patterns on monitors partially covered in mounds of shiny wrapped candy. This work is inspired by both comic books and scroll painting.

“How Much Memory is Needed” by Jenny Vogel challenges us to think about the waste of virtual objects in online environments. Created with custom software, this live streaming video installation represents a generic 3D world that continuously accumulates random 3D models, fills up the frame and then resets. This work is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “On Exactitude in Science (1946),” which raises the question of the usefulness of a map that is so exact that it eventually reaches the size of the actual territory.

Asha Tamirisa’s work “ARTIFACT” is a sculptural installation motivated by the connections between textiles and electronics, communication technologies and computational media. The piece literally weaves textiles and electronics materials into a singular tapestry. By bringing together these seemingly disparate materials, the work illuminates the shared technical and labor histories between these materials and technical processes. 

This exhibition is free. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., and Friday, Saturday and Sunday 1–4 p.m. A reception and gallery talk with featured artists will be held from 4:15–6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 6. The exhibition is part of this year’s [Re]Generation Summit, where artists, scholars and leaders in the field of arts and technology will gather to consider how we facilitate structural changes to the disciplines of arts and technology to be more equitable, collaborative and open in the 21st century.

For more information, contact Ammerman Center Director and Curator Andrea Wollensak at ajwol@conncoll.edu.  


January 9, 2020