Statement
In an age of artificial intelligence, our relationship with technology feels increasingly tense, uncomfortable, and diminishing of the human condition. In many cases, new media art allows for enhancement of the aesthetic and expressive realms of art creation - quite literally augmenting our experiences of art through immersive technology, virtual reality, kinetic autoanimations, and more. However, it can often feel that each integration of technology into the human experience of art is a small - but not insignificant - exchange of our own humanity. Rich Loen’s body of work in this emerging liminal space transforms that tension into an opportunity to rediscover our humanity within a technological landscape. A kinetic clock responds to how long you stand in front of it; a road sign that’s sole purpose is to make people feel seen, rather than advertised at; the QuickDraw series showcases how humans mark-make concepts and symbols; Databells turns the human experience of the material world into a musical production that is as ephemeral as the data it represents. Loen’s work is a project in humanization. It is about transforming technologies into reflections of what it means to be human.
When Loen started the Road Sign project back in 2018, he set out to disrupt the expectation of what a large road sign typically does. Instead of attempting to promote or sell goods or services, Loen’s Road Sign plays with an iterative art piece that engages its audience through inside joke, factoid, or saying. Each expression guided by “will this make someone feel seen today”. This process is meant to create excitement, curiosity, and community - and as a result, often finds itself within online discussion threads across social media. The object once instrumental in perpetuating capitalism is now mobilized to promote connection both in the material world and online. Ultimately, the objective of this art is met each time it is engaged online, shared back through digital communications, captured with digital photos, only to be further shared. Audience engagement is the art’s process.
As his journey unfolded into 2020, Loen created Databells - an immersive installation work that articulately fuses together kinetic art with new media, data sonification, and aleatoric performance. Unlike the Road Sign, the Databells installation offers a complex and layered interface through which its audience can feel seen. To be human is to experience joy, pleasure, pain, curiosity, fear, and so on. But to be human is also to exist and coexist within a material world and expansive universe, where so much is bewildering, unknown, awestriking, and uncontrollable. In a single ephemeral symphony, Databells bring bells in concert with each other to sonify our complex experience with being human and existence itself. Through new media and digital technologies, we find ourselves in one of the most universal of human expressions: music.
Loen invites the audience - not into his world - but rather, into an opportunity to see themselves within the world itself; within a world where all too often, technologies increasingly feel like an erasure of our humanity.