Roan Alvarez

Roan Alvarez (b. 1995) earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Her works look into the identity in the contemporary hyper-mediated world, specifically inquiring on the negotiation of identities between the physical and the virtual realm.

Alvarez primarily works with interactive transmedia– a combination of traditional and non-traditional materials and processes, which often involves translucent and transparent materials, LED lights, microcontrollers, sensors, and other electronic components. The incorporation of technology in her pieces enables the audience to interact with and sometimes influence, the work.

Artist Statement

The artwork is presented as a freeform circuit that connects three thin-film-transistor (TFT) screens and an analog distance sensor to a microcontroller. The work uses an IR distance sensor to read the distance between the viewer and the artwork. Once the sensor is activated at a specific range, the screens will display various Bitmap and ASCII animations of hand gestures; The closer the viewer is in front of the work the more abstract the animation gets. Its process is borrowed from computer vision. Where, in order for a computer to “see” an image, it needs to transmute that given image into numerical pixel values in order to translate it into binary data.

The gestures presented in the work are the ones that we make when we engage with our handheld devices, sans the device. The work reflects on how digital platforms influence human behavior and selfhood. Nowadays, our sense of selfhood is no longer developed in relation to others “but also in relation to algorithms that generate value for shareholders or enforce state dictates.” Actions most common to being online such as scrolling, tapping, swiping, etc. are tactile responses to these networked connections. According to Hodge, some gestures, like mindless scrolling or compulsive tapping are key to “divesting from the burden of selfhood.”

MOHINI OCHANGCO (OoakosiMo)

An artist in various mediums for 20+ years, Mohini specializes in the creation of glitch art with found photography, audio samples and video, with elements of collage, utilizing two decades experience in professional video editing and post production. She also uses VJ tools, phone apps for image and/or video editing, AI generation, and screenshots of historically or personally relevant topics to create what she describes as “hyperkinetic warped collages.” Her works mostly reflect imaginary or theoretical concepts that are often internal dialogue responses which have also become personal premonitions or oracles. She also attempts to examine her work from the perspective of the viewer to produce resonating effects at a time when they are needed.

Mohini is an original member of an early cryptoart community, “Trash Art,” which began as a rebellion against gated blockchain art collections and profit-focused
collectors who were critical of artists whose work did not fit preconceived notions of what blockchain art should encompass.

Despite criticisms of “having no skill, being lazy, creating spam and trash that is degrading to the blockchain,” Mohini and her friends persisted in their creative endeavors while having fun in their pursuit of pure artistry. This ethos, which embodies the rejection of gate-keeping, snowballed into a full-blown movement about freedom of expression and expanding what blockchain-based art is capable of being.

Mohini is also one of the first Asian and female pioneers in the independent blockchain art space, finding early success in open, uncurated marketplaces for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and becoming a staple of the cryptoart scene by February 2020. She has tested many beta versions of cryptoart platforms across several blockchains, interacting with them creatively and utilizing experimental features while suggesting improvements and reporting bugs. She was also keen to test new block explorers for NFTs at a time when there were no available guides or resources that were easy to digest for non-technically minded individuals.

Mohini considers herself to be extremely passionate about and focused on creating crypto tokens of her art and enjoys collecting NFTs by other artists that she follows and admires. She is blockchain-agnostic, meaning that she believes art can and should be collected across all blockchains, ready to use whatever utilities are available to tokenize her own art. She also believes in utilizing the trading capabilities built into these platforms, willing to trade her NFTs for others and supporting the works of her fellow token artists through purchasing them with cryptocurrency when she can.

Annie Pacaña

Annie Pacaña (b.1978, Tacloban) is a visual artist whose works revolve around the intersection of urban infrastructure and urban experience which explores countermapping and geonarratives. Her digital line drawings, and manipulations of photographs of her urban experience come out as digital prints, lightbox display, video on TV display and moving image projections in galleries, screenings, on stage and in public and virtual spaces. She explores collaborations with sound artists, contemporary dance artists and other visual artists with her linescapes and kaleidoscapes.

Pacaña carves a space of contemplation in the chaos of the urban environment with the projections of utility wires in Metro Manila and reflections on windshield pieces that depict the waves and ripples of the sea.

Annie is currently an Assistant Professor at the UP College of Fine Arts where she teaches Visual Communication and where she finished her Master of Fine Arts degree
in 2019. She is also an author of children’s storybooks since 2010.

Artist Statement

Trip Tech, 2023 | a triptych installation of:
digital print on paper, a moving image work on TV display and wall projection My work for this show follows a previous work in 2021, called Infinity, and in 2022, called Lostalgia, where I used images of looped cable wires and created a moving image piece from the chaotic visual to transform it into a tranquil experience. Trip Tech is a triptych installation of digital print on paper, a moving image tv display, and wall projection. The photo I took from my mobile phone is imported and manipulated using digital tools, and exported to other image-editing platforms, and finally rendered and saved for viewing outputs. Here, the image is translated to 1) a digital print on paper –a current innovation crossing paths with age-old technology, 2) a TV screen clearly displaying the moving image work in loop, and 3) a wall projection of the same moving image work which allows for the viewer’s interaction and engagement in the huge display therefore involving the viewer in the image-making process. It is a critique on our urban experience and how we come to understand the meanings of visual forms we encounter. I started out contemplating pylons as power distribution units and seeing how it also signifies the distribution and control of power grids across the land. Later on this fascination crawled on to wires, whether from a view overhead or in close encounters on sidewalks.
Walking and going thru the city thru different modes of transportation, I encounter urban forms that catch my interest basically because of the visual pollution they contribute to the city and consequently to our lives.

The cables and utility wires, electric posts, billboard and footbridge structures proliferating in public spaces signify the affordances of city-living, however the chaotic manner of its installation has already become disrespectful and dangerous to urban dwellers and passersby. Internet cables are installed overhead along a street and keep us virtually connected, allowing us to communicate, be entertained, and access information from each other. A huge pile of wires on the sidewalk arranged in an infinity loop waiting to be installed randomly surprises your morning walk. There are accumulation of wires hanging on posts, and a loop of these wires as excess cables for contingency for the next customer. In one corner there’s a pile of excess wires just leaning on the foot of a group of posts on a sidewalk, awaiting another group of men to clean up unused and cut-down cables. We see this in every city in Metro Manila and have grown accustomed to it. One can say it has become characteristic of Metro Manila, if we consider Kevin Lynch’ imageability. And this is very telling about how the inhabitants relate to and is affected by their environment, considering Guy Debord’s psychogeography. It may be that that our behaviors and feelings are influenced by the chaos in our environment. Similarly, our attitudes and manner of doing things influence our visual culture.

Juliana and Andrey Vrady

Juliana and Andrey Vrady are multimedia artists based in Germany. Andrey (28.02.1974) has been an artistic director of leading print and advertising companies for many years. He is keen on undertaking experiments with photography, making digital collages and finding new aesthetics in the new media. Juliana (06.01.1990), his other half, comes from the film industry.

The duo has achieved several milestones in interactive works and is still developing further. Their latest two media art installations, running as part of Future Forum (DWIH NY) in New York and Campus Germany (EXPO 2020) in Dubai, were inspired by the dialogue between people and technology. They tracked the emotional reactions of visitors via an artificial intelligence that split a mood picture of the test subjects into individual colour fragments in real time and projected it onto the wall as a work of art. This was a brilliant game between psyche, aesthetics and AI.

Christina Lopez

Christina Lopez is a visual artist based in Manila, Philippines. Her contemporary art practice ranges from the traditional sense of image production to methods more involved with new media. She is interested in the capacity of art to present alternative possibilities; to theorise, to test certain boundaries that are currently in place. There is specifc intent to explore power, including its relations, structure, and implications.

Recently, she has been producing work that utilizes paranoia as a tool for divination, one that navigates through the obfuscation omnipresent in the production and dissemination of new technologies.

The forms she chooses to represent these concepts often involve digital-physical fusion, refecting that the virtual is inseparable from material realities. By grasping at what is seen and unseen progress is viewed as something that is neither good nor evil, and arguments are presented with commitment to what the future could be. Her work can be found inside and outside of privatised spaces and institutions. She continues to exhibit work in the Philippines and abroad.

Artist Statement

“Mandy” was the title of a project I started in 2019. It is based on a fictional woman, whose vague descriptions and traits were based on a GPT-2 model trained on buyer personas. For this iteration of the work, I had conversations with ChatGPT about Mandy again. The girls illustrated in the work are all Mandy, the different iterations representing the fickleness of identity (as viewed through the lens of certain metrics – advertising, marketing, social media, etc.).

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