O-1 Visas
In the future, which is pretty much nearly here, artists among others will need to be critically fluent in the ways of advanced technology. Yuwen Huang, a new media artist and curator born in China and currently living in the U.S., is already there. Working with blockchains, datasets, algorithms, NFTs, Python programming language, and other digital tools I do not pretend to understand, she creates participatory artworks whose spirit harkens back to the everyday magic of Fluxus and the early computer experiments of Stan VanDerBeek. “Random Walk Memory,” a record of the artist’s wanderings through Chicago, is charmingly navigable via a custom website organized according to the color palette of the city. “Artist Poem” provides endless playful definitions of what it means to be an artist, generated by means of an “artist poem processor,” to which viewers can contribute their choice of words. Stanzas include “the person who/ chats with AI/ in a corner/ is an artist” and “the person who/ jokes about penis/ liberty bells house/ is an artist.” Interactions between humans and machines are increasing daily; may they all be as creatively cooperative as the ones imagined by Huang.
—Lori Waxman 2025-01-24 2:13 PM