“When a QR code is scanned, it takes the viewer to an Instagram account while simultaneously triggering the mechanical lambs’ mouths to actuate. The work refers to the agency of following and being a follower in social media.”
— Jordan Vinyard
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About the artist
Jordan Vinyard
By challenging society’s prolific button-pushing tendencies, Jordan Vinyard’s kinetic sculptures, installations, and performances satirize the alchemizing effects of technology. Since receiving her MFA from Florida State University, she has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Dubai; The Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum, South Korea; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, Arizona; Art Basel, Miami; The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina; Collarworks, New York, and solo exhibition art NART art space in Narva, Estonia. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Thrive Community Projects Grant, the Oklahoma Artist Fellowship Award, The United Arts of Florida Grant, and the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Creative Projects Grant, and she has been nominated twice for the Joan Mitchell Award. Currently, she is the dean of visual and performing arts and associate professor of art at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. She is also responsible for the university’s expanded media program, which includes kinetics, bio art, installation, and performance. Additionally, she is the founder and director of Art Wrecker, an experimental space predicated on socially engaged and dialogical forms of art.
Artist Statement
Our lives are based on a concession of volts; the numerics of bars, power, and connection are our confidants and security. Mutilated by tiny cameras, filters, and split screens and segmented by data, we have ironically become both posthuman and subhuman. My work is about re-establishing the virtue of the physical body. It is a call for algorithmic unfolding that demands a return to a practice of presence. Consisting of kinetic sculptures, multi-media installations, and video/performance, each piece intentionally creates physically instinctive gaps for viewers.
From empty benches to installed reactionary sensors, machines appear to pathetically wait for humanity to return. I believe technology can be utilized to re-humanize by prompting an audience to begin asking not, “What is that thing doing?” but rather, “What am I doing that makes that thing do what it's doing?” This engagement is central to the work and acts as an alarum for societal reboot, where viewers are asked to recognize the deep need for humanistic responsibility and presence within a technological and numerically driven culture.
