I am delighted to announce that I will be spending the month of December 2019 at the art residency at Xenoform Labs in San Francisco.
Established in October 2018, Xenoform Labs features ample studio space and housing for a solo artist or couple, within a home environment, in San Francisco’s historic Mission District. The studio includes digital media, virtual-reality hardware, media production and light-fabrication capabilities. We ask the artists to come prepared with an initial inquiry, to be able to focus solely on the process of experimentation, so that their ideas can take shape and become the foundation of refined and finished works.
While I’m at Xenoform Labs, I plan to work on my project Exoplanet Zoo, which proposes to develop a taxonomy of exoplanets with the use of VR technology. To this end, data sets associated with exoplanets will be integrated into the source code of geometric .stl files, generating a variety of exoplanet “species.” The menagerie of VR forms will make the variances and characteristics of exoplanets tangible and explore a variety of classification options.
Dovetailing with the exploration of 3D space, I also plan to 3D-print a series of Moon craters that are named after women, a continuation of my Women With Impact project. This project highlights the underrepresentation of women in science through an examination of lunar nomenclature. A crater is essentially a void, a hollow in the regolith. The void echoes the underrepresentation of women in positions of power, in the scientific canon, and in history. The void also speaks to its opposite: each crater is a result of an impact, a shattering of the calm surface. The women who made such an impact will be thrown into full relief with each 3D-printed sculpture.