State Of The Art

We're diving into art and AI with Chief Technology Officer of Serpentine Galleries, Ben Vickers. In this episode, Ben shares his views on the introduction of AI into the world of art, to what degree AI in the arts is being employed today, its implications, and where he would like to see AI applied or integrated.- About Ben Vickers -CTO @SerpentineUK | Current Exhibitions: The Deep ListenerPublishing House @IgnotaBooks | Next Up: States of the Body Produced by LoveInitiator of @unMonasteryTrustee @AutoItaliaLiveJury @Lumenprize, @ArtsAtCERNAdvisory Board @Transmediale, @SXSW and @BANNERREPEATERFounding Member @Guild_isAdvisor to @ArtxN+@ZIEN, @FurtherfieldAdvocate of @MethodKit and @Matera2019Learn more at http://benvickers.net/

At the end of 2018, the State of the Art team reflected on how State of the Art could become more inclusive given our own feelings around underrepresentation in the art world. To that end, in 2019 we introduced monthly themes and guest hosting in an effort to bring more voices and diverse art-related topics onto our platform. Today we celebrate having aired 100 episodes! Coupled with this milestone achievement is a growth in our listenership alongside the success of our first round of guest hosts. Tune-in to hear soundbites of some of the most impactful quotes from our guest host episodes. Below, please find a list of our amazing 2019 guest host lineup and links to listen to the full interviews featured in this mini-episode.We're immensely grateful to our first round of guest hosts:Tre Borden, The Black Creative, February 2019 | Featured Episode (72): The Black Creative 02: Leila Weefur, Artist, Writer & CuratorMeg Zany, Sex Positive, March 2019 | Featured Episode (77): Sex Positive: The Art of Shaping Body Politics with Uncle Reezy, ArtistDorothy Santos, Queerness, June 2019 | Featured Episode (93): Queerness with Guest Host Dorothy Santos & Artist, Designer, & Researcher, Yasheng SheMichelle Hartney, Art & Morality, July 2019 | Featured Episode (98): Art & Morality with Michelle Hartney & the Guerilla Girls

Guest host, Michelle Hartney rounds out her month-long dive into Art & Morality with Decolonize This Place. Decolonize This Place is an action-oriented collective of activists who stage protests in cultural institutions to open conversations related to Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification. In this episode, Michelle and Marz Saffore, along with, Amy Weng members of Decolonize This Place, discuss the practice of "art washing," who defines what art is or isn't, issues of display, and the responsibility museum and institutions have to hold their board members accountable for actions which go against their values.Notably, at the time of this recording, Michelle and Decolonize This Place members debated the position of Warren B. Kanders as, then, Vice-Chairman at the Whitney Museum. Kanders company, Safariland, produces tear-gas canisters and other supplies used by the military and law enforcement. Safariland canisters have been used against unarmed migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, Turkey’s Gezi Park, the Gaza Strip, Standing Rock in North Dakota, and, most recently, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Decolonize this Place has led the charge in protesting Kanders presence on the Museum's board hosting 9 weeks of art and action in the weeks leading up to the Whitney Biennial. Today, on July 25, 2019, Warren B. Kanders announced his resignation as Vice-Chairman at the Whitney.- About Decolonize This Place -Decolonize This Place is an action-oriented movement centering around Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification. Facilitated by MTL+ Collective. #decolonizethisplaceLearn more at https://www.decolonizethisplace.org/Follow them @decolonizethisplace

Guest host, Michelle Hartney discusses the decolonization of museums with Heather Campbell Coyle, Chief Curator and Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum, and Amelia Wiggins, Assistant Director of Learning & Engagement at the Delaware Art Museum. Together, they break down what decolonizing museums means and entails. Heather and Amelia share and explain the Delaware Art Museum's reinstallation efforts as an empathetic museum and how this new approach reshape the acquisition process, language-use and presentation in the production of new exhibitions. -About Heather Campbell Coyle-Heather Campbell Coyle is Chief Curator and Curator of American Art at the Delaware Art Museum. She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Delaware. She lectures, publishes, and researches primarily on American painting, photography, and popular illustration from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is a specialist in the art of John Sloan and the Ashcan School, a strength of the Delaware Art Museum’s collection. -About Amelia Wiggins-Amelia Wiggins is Assistant Director of Learning & Engagement at the Delaware Art Museum, where she manages the guide corps, oversees gallery programs, and develops interpretation integrating community voices. She previously worked in family programs and museum education positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Franklin Institute, and The Stark Museum of Art. Ms. Wiggins has been honored with awards in excellence in label writing from the American Alliance of Museum and an award for excellence in programming from the Mountain-Plains Museum Association. She holds an MSEd in Leadership in Museum Education from Bank Street College and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.Special thanks from the Delaware Art Museum to the following collaborators who have spearheaded the Museum's reinstallation project and its diversity and inclusion initiatives:Stacey Mann and Janeen Bryant of Empathetic Museum, Stace Treat of Crystal Bridges Museum, Dan Rahimi of Penn Museum, Scott Wilcox of Yale Center for British Art, Judy Koke of Institute for Learning Innovation, Kathleen McLean of Independent Exhibitions, Museums as Sites for Social Action (MASS Action), Keonna HendrickAnd the following organizations whose leadership on these issues informed the Museum's work and thinking: Museums and Race, The Incluseum, Museums Are Not Neutral , Visitors of Color, Participatory Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

In this episode, guest host Michelle Hartney tackles gender and racism in the arts with art historian, Catherine McCormack. Catherine is an academic and writer who's done extensive research on women in the arts and the exclusionary practices of the art world. Together, Michelle and Catherine discuss the "male gaze," the use of female bodies versus male bodies in the arts and their divergent meanings, and the role of the #MeToo movement in the art world.-About Catherine McCormack-Catherine is a writer, art historian and independent curator based in London.She's currently working on two book projects – the first is about patriarchy, feminism and art history after #MeToo and will be published by Icon Books in 2020. The second is a collection of fine art ceilings from around the world and is called The Art of Looking Up (White Lion 2019). She is also working on an exciting curatorial project about imaging motherhood. In May 2019 Catherine spoke at the Venice Biennale about exhibiting women artists and contemporary art.Catherine's literary agent is Becky Thomas at Johnson and Alcock agencyWhen not writing, Catherine can be found teaching art history at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, where she is the course director for the summer school on Women and Art. Catherine has a PhD in Art History from UCL where she worked as a Teaching Fellow. She has appeared on Sky News and BBC Breakfast talking about art.Her writing has been published in The Independent, the Architectural Review, Stylist, Glass magazine, Label magazine, and in international academic journals and museum exhibition catalogues.Learn more about Catherine at https://thisiscatherinemccormack.com/Follow her @womeninthepicture

Michelle Hartney kicks off Art & Morality by speaking with a founding member of the feminist art collective, the Guerrilla Girls (GG) on sexism and racism in the arts--from the study of its history to representation in museum, institutions and galleries. Michelle asks GG founder, speaking under the pseudonym Frida Kahlo, about the emergence of the Guerrilla Girls in the 80s, the Westernization of the art world, and the arguments made against "over-contextualizing" art and the fear of censorship in the art world.*Helpful Links*Hannah Gadsby, Nanette, Netflix SpecialThe Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western ArtGuerrilla Girls, Three Ways to Write a Museum Wall Label When the Artist is a Sexual Predator, 2018-About the Guerrilla Girls-The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. Over 55 people have been members over the years, some for weeks, some for decades. Our anonymity keeps the focus on the issues, and away from who we might be. We wear gorilla masks in public and use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders. We have done over 100 street projects, posters and stickers all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Mexico City, Istanbul, London, Bilbao, Rotterdam, and Shanghai, to name just a few. We also do projects and exhibitions at museums, attacking them for their bad behavior and discriminatory practices right on their own walls, including our 2015 stealth projection about income inequality and the super rich hijacking art on the façade of the Whitney Museum in New York. Our retrospectives in Bilbao and Madrid, Guerrilla Girls 1985-2015, and our US traveling exhibition, Guerrilla Girls: Not Ready To Make Nice, have attracted thousands. We could be anyone. We are everywhere. What’s next? More creative complaining!!Learn more at https://www.guerrillagirls.com/

We're excited to introduce our listeners to Michelle Hartney, Chicago-based artist and activist who will be leading this month's discussion on Art & Morality. In this episode, Andrew speaks with Michelle about her ongoing project, Correct Art History, which calls attention to the art world's tendency to sweep the reprehensible behavior of art icons and heroes under the rug. Together they address the issue of morality when it comes to viewing art, whether or not institutions have a responsibility to inform audiences on the good, the bad & the ugly of the artists on their walls, the role of the #MeToo Movement and its influence in the art world, and why censorship is not the answer to the controversy of art and morality. Michelle also touches upon additional topics she will be addressing during her month-long takeover and introduces a few of the guests she has lined up to join the discussion of Art & Morality. -About Michelle Hartney-Michelle Hartney is a Chicago based artist whose work addresses a broad range of topics, from women’s health issues, to the concept of heroes, love, and the cosmos. She works in a variety of materials, including fiber, wood, found objects, installation, community based interactive performance, and the internet. Her interest in using art to address social issues began during her graduate studies in art therapy at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was an Albert Schweitzer Fellow.In 2015 she became the Chicago rally coordinator for the non-profit organization Improving Birth's nationwide Labor Day rallies, and created a performance and installation at Daley Plaza called Mother’s Right, a piece about the United States’ high rates of maternal mortality, postpartum PTSD, and obstetric abuse. Hartney founded the Women's Health Collective in 2016, an organization dedicated to utilizing creative approaches to raise awareness about women's health issues by linking artists, designers, writers, musicians, technologists, healthcare providers, and activists to work collaboratively on socially engaged, community based projects. Their first project, Kimberly Said No, collaboration with five Chicago actors, included a public performance that addressed an obstetric assault that was captured on film.Since the 2016 election, Hartney has temporarily shifted the focus of her work away from maternal healthcare issues. She has been focusing on creating work to support the resistance, with a focus on peace and love, in addition to highlighting the misogyny, racism, and hatred embedded in Trump’s rhetoric.Hartney has two children and resides in Chicago.Learn more about Michelle Hartney at https://www.michellehartney.com/Follow her @MichelleHartneyArt

In this episode, SOTA founder and former host, Ethan James Appleby, returns to speak with guest host, Dorothy Santos on her findings while focusing on queerness during the month of June. The two reflect on the diverse cultural interpretations & connotations around queerness that emerged during June's interviews, they revisit the idea of viewer's perception versus author's intent in relation to queer characters, and dive into what a queer space is. We also learn more about Dorothy, her current and future projects, and her love & disdain for the art world. Helpful Links:Untitled Art Fair, Live Panel Recording Strange Magic Podcast is the "witchy woo woo" podcast referenced by DorothyPeperomioides is the name of Dorothy's favorite plant-Thank you Dorothy Santos for being our June 2019 guest host on State of the Art Podcast.Guest hosting is a new project we're exploring on SOTA in 2019 as part of our initiative to be more inclusive, bring on diverse voices better suited to discuss certain topics, and to build community. If you are interested in guest hosting or have a theme suggestion, please comment on our Instagram @StateoftheArt.

In this episode, Dorothy Santos speaks with digital artist, Lark VCR , on queering the digital art spaces to address hypothetical realities that are very much within the realm of possibility within are increasingly tech-guided lives. Together they discuss a selection of Lark's projects which delve into topics surrounding surveillance and trauma; these include their heart rate bio feedback devices Babump and Tattle-Tale Heart, as well as their collective-healing project, Traumagotchi.-About Lark VCR-Lark Alder aka. Virtually Conflicted Reality explores multiplicity of meaning and experience in an increasingly digitized world, nudging at the dissolving boundary between body and machine. Lark is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s MFA program, and has shown at Frameline, MIX NYC, the San Francisco International Arts Festival, Schuwels Museum in Berlin, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and is currently teaching at the CADRE Digital Media Art Program at San Jose State University.Learn more at https://larkvcr.com/Follow her @LarkVCR

Afro Guatemalan-Salvadoran cartoonist, Breena Nuñez joins Dorothy Santos in a discussion about comics, graphics novels, and queerness through a multicultural lens. Breena dives into the back story of some of her comics, her experiences growing up as Afrolatinx and how the seemingly unconnected threads of her childhood converged to weave her into the cartoonist she is today. *Helpful Links*Nagual - animal guardian Comics mentioned in this episode:Trinidad Escobar, http://www.trinidadescobar.com/Avy Jetter, http://nuthingoodat4.com/Julie Fiveash, https://jooliefiveash.tumblr.com/tagged/jooliecomix-About Breena Nuñez-Breena is an Afro Guatemalan-Salvadoran cartoonist based in Oakland, CA by way of San Bruno and South San Francisco. Breena also identifies as a non-binary womxn who uses She/Her/They/Them pronouns. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts. Breena's drawings and writings focus on Afrolatinx diaspora, Central American experiences, queer people of color, and socially awkward animal people. Her comics are primarily self-published as zines, and are accessible at zine fests, small press expos and through her online Etsy shop. Breena's work has been featured in online articles and interviews with CultureStrike, Fierce Mitú (one authored by Alán Pelaez Lopez and another by Stephanie Ginese), Taco Talk with Julio Salgado, Huffington Post, Prime Vice, Colorlines, The Beat, Remezcla, and The Baylies.Learn more at https://www.breenache.com/Follow her @breenache

In this episode, Dorothy Santos brings us a discussion with Yasheng She on queer and femme narratives as represented in a wide array of media, including games, film, and manga. Together they look at the progressive rhetoric taken on by collectives like CLAMP, and dissect the role of audience perception versus the author's intent when it comes to reconciling a character or narrative as queer.-About Yasheng She-Yasheng She is a Washington-based audio, visual, and textual storyteller. He has written for Gnovis blogs – a peer-reviewed journal at Georgetown University and produced audio stories for Georgetown Forum – a radio program also at Georgetown University. Yasheng is a self-starter and highly motivated in everything he does. As a content producer, Yasheng has been telling stories in many forms, regardless of whether it is a podcast, a blog, or a video. Over five years of research experience and ability to speak Mandarin Chinese, English, and Japanese fluently help him to become a studious and observant storyteller. He is passionate about understanding how macro-level social, political, and cultural changes shape how individual formulates her or his own narrative. He is driven and motivated in everything he does and is well versed in psychology, communication, and whatever he can learn to create compelling content.

Dorothy Santos speaks with Pakistani artist, Anum Awan about their new media work focused on non-western narratives, queerness, and spirituality. Together they touch upon the evolution of interactive design, debate the line between design & art, and how Anum incorporates South Asian culture and history in their practice.Helpful LinksDigital Sufi Shrine, http://www.anumawan.com/digital-sufi-shrineDawn of Freedom, https://vimeo.com/315713041Other Futures, Opens June 14, 2019, San Francisco, https://grayarea.org/event/other-futures/Tomorrow We Inherit the Earth, Jun 20-22, San Francisco, http://counterpulse.org/event/tomorrow-inherit-earth-revolutions-queer-muslim-future/-About Anum Awan-Anum is a Bay Area based interaction designer and new media artist who crafts mixed-reality experiences by blending physical and digital media centering queer, immigrant and non-western narratives. They were born and raised in Pakistan and came to the U.S. in 2008 to pursue a practice in art and design. They are a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design and California College of the Arts.Learn more at: http://www.anumawan.com/Follow her @AnumAwan

Dorothy Santos is a writer, curator, researcher, academic, educator, artist, and, currently, a doctoral student at UC Santa Cruz. Her passions run from film to mysticism and "witchy things." She is also the host of Art Practical podcast, PRNT SCRN, focused on bridging the gaps between analog, new media, and digital art practices.In this episode, SOTA host, Andrew Herman introduces Dorothy and, together, they discuss her journey into the arts, her background in science and love for biology, and the wide variety of interests Dorothy explores through her art writing and creative projects. They also touch upon June's theme, "Queerness," as Andrew hands off the mic for the remainder of the month.Helpful links:Dial Up App: https://dialup.com/-About Dorothy Santos-Dorothy R. Santos is a Filipina American writer, curator, and researcher whose academic interests include digital art, computational media, and biotechnology. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, she holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco and received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow.Her work appears in art21, Art Practical, Rhizome, Hyperallergic, Ars Technica, Vice Motherboard, and SF MOMA’s Open Space. Her essay “Materiality to Machines: Manufacturing the Organic and Hypotheses for Future Imaginings,” was published in The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture. She serves as a co-curator for REFRESH, a politically-engaged art and curatorial collective, the program manager for the Processing Foundation, and host for the podcast PRNT SCRN produced by Art Practical.

DADA.nyc is a truly unique community of digital artists who are finding new and innovative ways to communicate through their artwork. Moreover, Dada’s CEO and founder, Beatriz Helena Ramos, is exploring radical and visionary ways for artists to support themselves through the power of community--all mobilized by state of the art blockchain technology.In this episode, Beatriz shares how her commercial success as an artist, animator and entrepreneur ultimately led her to question her legacy, what makes Dada’s community of artists exceptional, and what experiments in new economies for artists Dada is working on.Learn more at https://dada.nyc/Show your support for Dada at https://www.seedinvest.com/dada-About Beatriz Helena Ramos-Beatriz is many things -- an artist, an illustrator, an animator, an entrepreneur.  She has created illustrations for the New York Times, worked on animated series for MTV, Disney and Cartoon network, and exhibited paintings in New York City galleries.  Her prolific creative career continues on to include creating comics, illustrating children’s books, photography, set design, sculpture, live action directing, and even puppet making in Prague.In 2002 she founded Dancing Diablo Studio in New York City, a content studio whose clients include Coca Cola, Macy’s, Kraft Foods, Jet Blue, Bayer, General Mills, Sesame Workshop, Hasbro, PBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, Disney, ESPN and more.

Maecenas provides “Art investment, without intermediaries,” claiming to let art investors “invest in fine art in the most transparent and efficient way.” In this episode, Andrew speaks with Marcelo Garcia Casil, co-founder & CEO of Maecenas about getting Maecenas up and running, how Maecenas has reshaped concepts of ownership and users relationship with investing, and who is using Maecenas.Learn more at https://www.maecenas.co/-About Mareclo Garcia Casil-A Financial Technology Innovation expert who has wide-ranging experience designing and building mission-critical systems for investment banks in Europe and Asia, and consulting for financial institutions.

We speak with Jesse Cory, co-founder and CEO of 1xRUN, a limited edition art print publisher, and Murals in the Market, dedicated to reinvigorating cities with murals by local artists. As an active member of the street art art scene, Jesse has seen his share of copyright infringement cases brought to him by artists he has worked with personally, and continues to fight for artists to maintain and enact their rights over their creations when threatened by brands and media companies. In this episode, Jesse recounts cases he's seen and been involved with, gives us the quick and dirty of VARA and its applications in a few scenarios, the basic rights artist retain over their work on the streets and as prints or originals, and touches upon how social media has become both a blessing and a curse for artists around the world. Helpful links:A Guide to the Visual Artists Rights Act, Cynthia Esworthy, NEA Office of General Counsel, JD Washington & Lee Law School 1997-About 1xRUN-Based in Detroit, Michigan, 1xRUN ("one-time run") is the world's leading publisher of fine art editions and online destination for original art. We pride our curation on showcasing limited edition prints, original artwork, books and exclusives from some of the best-known and emerging names in the new contemporary movement. With collectors in over 100 countries, we have published more than 1,300 editions since 2010. Every day, we drop a new batch of time-released, limited edition runs. Since we're always looking to the future, editions are only available for a limited time — when they are gone, they're gone! The artists we collaborate with never rest, and neither do we. 1xRUN is also host to Detroit's Inner State Gallery, a world-renowned exhibition space. Both 1xRUN's studio and Inner State Gallery are proud to call Detroit's historic Eastern Market district home.Learn more here-About Murals in the Market-Murals in the Market continues to enhance the Eastern Market experience and the district’s transformation into a must-see destination for arts, as well as food, in Detroit. For the past six years, 1xRUN and the company’s fine art gallery, Inner State, have curated and produced over 100 murals in Eastern Market alone, and over 200 murals throughout the city of Detroit. With the creation of these murals, each area has seen a significant visual impact on the surrounding neighborhood as well as increased traffic, additional economic development, and increased safety.In addition to creating new murals, Murals in the Market also hosts many events during the festival including panel discussions, artists dinners, meet and greet opportunities, site-specific installations, block parties, nightime events that coordinate with Eastern Market After Dark, and more! Murals in the Market is more than an international mural festival, it’s a creative platform that inspires and encourages community engagement using public art as a vessel.Learn more here

As an artist, academic, and a cofounder to an art technology company called Monograph, Kevin McCoy brings a unique perspective to the idea of authorship & ownership in its application to the digital and internet art scene. Established in 2014, Monegraph aimed to solve issues of provenance and legitimacy artists and collectors face when selling and buying digital art works. In this episode, we speak with Kevin about how Monegraph was received in its initial years, why provenance matters in the art world, and what some of the hurdles are facing digital and new media artists today.-About Kevin McCoy-His artworks take many diverse forms including video sculpture and installation, photography, long-form film, curatorial practice and performance, kinetic sculpture and software-driven on-line projects. Thematically, his work explores changing conditions around social roles, categories, genres and forms of value. His primary research questions ask 'What counts as new,’ 'How is meaning established,' and 'How are cultural memories formed'. He has worked collaboratively with Jennifer McCoy for many years to try to answer what it means to speak together, often finding that experience outstrips available modes of presentation and discourse. To these ends their work has adopted many methodological approaches: exhaustive categorization, recreation and reenactment, automation, miniaturization, and most recently remote viewing and speculative modeling.In New York City, his work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, P.S.1, Postmasters Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum, and Smack Mellon. International exhibitions include projects at the Pompidou Center, the British Film Institute, ZKM, the Hanover Kunstverien, the Bonn Kunstverein, and F.A.C.T. (Liverpool, UK). Grants include a 2002 Creative Capital Grant for Emerging Fields, a 2005 Wired Rave Award, and a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. Articles about his work have appeared in Art in America, Artforum, Flash Art, Art News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek. Residencies include work at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.His artwork is represented by in New York by Postmasters Gallery and in Geneva by Gallerie Guy Bartschi and can be seen in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and MUDAM in Luxembourg.In 2014 he co-founded monegraph.com a platform that uses the technology underlying Bitcoin to provide a mechanism for validating, owning and trading digital media assets. The project was presented at The New Museum as part of Rhizome's seven on seven conference and at Tech Crunch Disrupt in New York.His teaching engages both undergraduate and graduate students in studio art and related arts professions and addresses practical and theoretical uses of digital media technology together with surveys of related theoretical and philosophical texts. The current semester's coursework can be found at mccoyspace.com/nyu.Learn more at:auxillaryprojects.commonegraph.comcorespace.com

New month means a new theme for State of the Art, and May will be filled with discussions centered around the value of art as dictated not only by who created it, but also, where it's been, and how it has transferred between different parties. We will also be looking at how we define "ownership"in the arts, specifically diving into new forms of ownership introduced by blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, as well as contemporary issues around street art--looking at you General Motors & Mercedes-Benz.Join us for our first episode on Authorship & Ownership, dropping Thursday, May 9, 2019.

Artist duo Mary O'Brien & Daniel McCormick use "land as the palette" for the work they do. In this episode, the two explain their efforts to use land art as a restorative medium, bringing much needed life and balance back to struggling ecosystems. As we continue our exploration into "environmental art," O'Brien and McCormick explain why they refer to their work as "restorative art" rather than "eco-art," how they became involved in the land art movement, and who they bring into their artistic efforts to successfully rebuild the habitats they're involved with.-About Watershed Sculpture-The Art Practice of Daniel McCormick & Mary O’BrienDaniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien collaborate on ecological art installations that have remedial qualities. Working in both urban and agricultural watersheds and riparian corridors, McCormick and O’Brien respond to environmental issues by moving away from an anthropocentric view of nature to create sculptures that work with natural systems. Their work is often ephemeral and temporal. When their interventions are completed and a restoration cycle is established, they intend to leave no evidence of a hand made object. For over 25 years, they have been using art to restore and affect a positive ecological balance in damaged environments.McCormick & O’Brien both hold degrees from University of California, Berkeley. Daniel McCormick's experience as a multi-disciplinary artist in the fields of sculptural installation and environmental design brings both a public art and ecological trajectory to their work. Mary O'Brien is a sculptor and writer and initiates the community engagement plans enlisting the support of art organizations and government agencies.Their collaborations reflect the artists’ concerns for the environment and community, but also their belief that art has a responsibility to do more than witness or document cultural changes. Their installation works can be found in watersheds across the United States.     Learn more at www.watershedsculpture.comFollow them @watershedsculpture*This interview was recorded at The Headlands Center for the Arts; learn more here*

Conceptual artist Antti Laitinen, uses natural elements and the environment he inhabits in rural Finland to create unexpected interruptions, installations, performances, and stunning photography. Although he and his work have been referred to as "environmental" due to his use of the Earth as his primary medium, Laitinen explains that these terms aren't at the forefront of his creations. In this episode, we speak with Antti about his process and the reception of his pieces, why he chooses to use natural elements as his primary tools for creation, and what he thinks of "environmental art." Learn more about Antti Laitinen hereOur Europe-based listeners can Fall and Rise at the following gallery exhibitions:LUSTO – The Finnish Forest MuseumMyrskyasema – Storm StationLustontie 1, 58450 Punkaharju, Finland26.4.2019 – 12.1.2020Beijing Riverside Art MuseumContinuous Refle(a)ctionEast Hongyan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China26.5 – 28.8.2019Tournay Solvay ParcChaussée de la Hulpe 201 – 1170 Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels4.7 – 29.9.2019

Continuing our exploration into the umbrella of environmental art, in this episode Andrew speaks with artist, Aviva Rahmani, who creates public, site-specific art to fight off land developers. Focusing on her series, Blued Trees Symphony, Aviva explains how her approach incorporates community, creativity and legal theory to protect natural landscapes. She also touches upon her belief of our community being in a time of "eco-suicide," and where she identifies her art in the umbrella of "environmental art."-About Blued Trees Symphony- The Blued Trees Symphony is an ongoing, site-specific land art project wherein Aviva Rahmani and collaborators convert threatened lands into art pieces. The hope is that by having them protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), Aviva can the prevent the use of eminent domain to seize lands for pipeline construction where the artworks are situated.The first iteration of Blued Trees Symphony emerged on, June 21, 2015 in Peekskill, New York. It is now installed over many miles of proposed pipeline expansions, and each 1/3 measure of those miles has been copyrighted for protection. Visually, Blued Trees Symphony presents stretches of trees painted with musical movements using an environmentally friendly ultramarine pigment. Together, these movements form a score which can be read and performed.Learn more about Blued Trees Symphony here-About Aviva Rahmani-Aviva Rahmani began her career as a performance artist, founding and directing the American Ritual Theatre (1968-1971), performing throughout California. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts and received a PhD from Plymouth University, UK, Rahmani has presented workshops on her theoretical approach to environmental restoration and her transdisciplinary work has been exhibited internationally including in The Independent Museum of Contemporary Art (IMCA), Cyprus with the National Centres of Contemporary Art (NCCA), Ekaterinburg and Moscow, Russian Federation, KRICT, Daejeon, Korea, the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO. Her work has been discussed and covered in books, essays, and in art magazines such as Art in America, Art News, The Huffington Post and Leonardo. Rahmani’s video documentation Gulf to Gulf sessionshave been viewed on line from over eighty-five countries. “Trigger Points/ Tipping Points,” a precursor to Gulf to Gulf, premiered at the 2007 Venice Biennale. In 2002, her pioneering community action project, Blue Rocks, helped restore degraded wetlands on Vinalhaven Island, Maine a USDA investment of over $500,000. The Blued Trees Symphony (2015 - present) has received numerous awards and been extensively written about and exhibited internationally. A Mock Trial is scheduled for the project at the Cardozo Law School, NYC on April 25, 2018.Learn more here

In this episode, Andrew Herman speaks with Miami-based artist, Franky Cruz, who works with butterflies to create unexpected art pieces. Initially a graffiti artist, Franky shifted away from conventional painting in search of a non-toxic means by which to express himself creatively. This environmentally conscious move led him to learn how to repair butterfly wings, rear caterpillars successfully through metamorphosis, and how to work with these creatures to produce large-scale paintings; all in an effort to raise awareness and empathy for an organism weighing less that 1/5 of an ounce.-About Franky Cruz-Follow Franky @toolooselautrecWatch Franky's video on Vivarium Meconium hereFranky Cruz is represented by Spinello Projects

With Earth Day celebrations just around the corner, for the month of April, we will be dipping our toes into the vast spectrum of Environmental Art. SOTA host, Andrew Herman, returns to lead fascinating conversations with a 4 different artists, each using and/or collaborating with the environment in a variety of ways. Primarily, we will be looking at eco art, land art, earth art, and how each artist approaches and considers the implications of their work both as an art form and, potentially, as an act of activism. Join us in this pre-episode kick-off to learn more about the SOTA team's thoughts on where the month will take us and what we hope to learn along the way.

In this wrap up episode with SOTA hosts Andrew Herman and MegZany, the two discuss Meg's conversations around sex positivity in the arts and the different voices and opinions she brought onto the podcast as part of that exploration. Together they delve into Meg's experience as a guest host, what surprised her during the interviews, the most poignant conversations or topics she felt merged throughout the month, whether or not her opinions on feminism, sex object, and other terminology has changed, and what social media's role is in the display of female bodies.Thank you MegZany for being our March 2019 guest host on State of the Art Podcast.Guest hosting is a new project we're exploring on SOTA in 2019 as part of our initiative to be more inclusive, bring on diverse voices better suited to discuss certain topics, and to build community. If you are interested in guest hosting or have a theme suggestion, please comment on our Instagram @StateoftheArt.

Guest host, MegZany dives into the work of new media artist, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, who explores aspects of relationships and interactions through digital spaces and performances. Together, the two discuss Shawné's transition to offline work, her interest in power dynamics and how these are addressed in her pieces, the correlation between kink spaces and Shawné's artwork, and how she transfers aspects and sensations from sexual and "taboo" realms into art spaces to engage her audience, and so much more.-About Shawné Michaelain Holloway-Shawné Michaelain Holloway is a new media artist using sound, video, and performance to shape the rhetorics of technology and sexuality into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally in spaces like The New Museum (NYC, NY), Sorbus Galleria (Helsinki, Fi), The Kitchen (NYC, NY) Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, UK), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL). Currently, Holloway teaches in the New Arts Journalism department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.Learn more about Shawné at http://www.shawnemichaelainholloway.com/Follow her @cleogirl2525Tweet her @cleogirl2525

Welcome to a world of explosive color and convoluted bodies, where pleasure-seekers come adorned with halos and bodies are shamelessly explored and shared. This is the art of Uncle Reezy aka Marissa Kelling.In this episode, guest host MegZany speaks with self-taught artist, Kelling who goes by Uncle Reezy on Instagram. Reezy's drawings unabashedly depict individuals and groups engaged in various acts of pleasure from playfully making out to masturbation and threesomes. Together, they discuss toeing the line between sex positivity and objectification, the inspiration behind Reezy's work, and how Reezy came to champion sexuality in her illustrations.Follow her @Uncle.Reezy

MegZany kicks-off her month-long exploration of sex positivity with Amanda Micallef, co-founder and president of Arsenic, a media group focused on embracing sexuality and empowering women in the industry. Together, they discuss Arsenic's mission, how they're championing sexuality, the affects social media has had on the movement, and the backlash sex positivity faces amongst both men and women. **Things to Note**The name "Billy" comes up in this conversation, referencing Billy Hawkins, co-founder at Arsenic.-About Amanda Micallef-Amanda Micallef was inspired to co-found Arsenic because of her strong sex-positive feminism beliefs. Arsenic began as a community of female models where Amanda put the editorial power in the hands of the women themselves. Arsenic, since expanded into music, fine art, events, television, and beyond. Before founding Arsenic, Amanda spent 12 years as a producer of over 20 films, music video, and commercial productions, where she was responsible for all aspects of projects from inception through distribution. You can learn more about Arsenic hereOr Follow them:On IG@Arsenic@ArsenicGallery@ArsenicAudioOn Snap@ArsenicTVhttps://www.weareelemental.co/

This month we welcome guest host, MegZany who will be taking our mobile recording studio for a fierce ride bringing you a fantastic lineup of women artist's embracing sex positivity at the core of their work. Before we drop her first episode this Thursday (March 7, 2019), Andrew talks with Meg about her journey from corporate America to full-time street artist, feminism, and why she decided to focus on sex positivity this month as State of the Art's second guest host.Guest hosting is a new project we're exploring on SOTA in 2019 as part of our initiative to be more inclusive, bring on diverse voices better suited to discuss certain topics, and to build community. Guest Hosts are invited to take full-ownership of their chosen theme, inviting artists, curators, collectors, influencers they believe will add a strong voice to the platform and their selected topic of discussion. If you are interested in guest hosting or have a theme suggestion, please comment on our Instagram @StateoftheArt.-About MegZany-From selling humans legally in the corporate world as a recruiter to installing art in the streets illegally, MegZany is leaving her mark on the world through street art.MegZany is a Los Angeles-based street artist best known for her “Courage Has No Gender” campaign. Zany began putting up work in the streets in 2016 starting with her biplane + banner image and has quickly evolved her practice and expanded her reach from the streets of Los Angeles to cities including Brussles, Wynwood, Miami, Montreal, London, Kraków, Lyon, Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boise, Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Memphis, New Orleans, and Austin.The nature of Zany’s work is a celebration of contrasts, for instance, bold, assertive text paired with figures that connect with viewers on a different level, often evoking childhood nostalgia. Furthermore, an enthusiast herself from an early age, Zany celebrates the trope of flight and often utilizes images that depict aviation in her projects. One of Zany’s most iconic stencils is of Amelia Earhart paired with the mantra, “Courage Has No Gender” intended to generate awareness regarding societal gender disparity and encourage viewers to create an optimistic future. As a female street artist actively working in a male-dominated field, Zany herself is a modern iteration of Earhart as she fearlessly shares her hopeful message.You can learn more about MegZany hereOr follow her @MegZany

State of the Art host, Andrew Herman, returns to the podcast to unpack February 2019's theme, "The Black Creative," explored and produced by guest host, Tre Borden. Together they discuss inclusivity on platforms, how we (SOTA) and others can improve our approach and expand that dialogue, Tre's takeaways and the moments he found most resonant in the interviews, and how each artist brought a different perspective and served as a reminder that, yes, these are all black experiences but they're all uniquely individual. Tre also shares how he became involved in the arts and the conversations he aims to inspire through his projections.Thank you Tre for being our very first guest host on State of the Art Podcast. Guest hosting is a new project we're exploring on SOTA in 2019 as part of our initiative to be more inclusive, bring on diverse voices better suited to discuss certain topics, and to build community. If you are interested in guest hosting or have a theme suggestion, please comment on our Instagram @StateoftheArt.

In this episode of The Black Creative, Tre speaks with multidisciplinary artist, Martin Alexander Spratlen Etem about his experiences growing up as a mixed-race person, his journey into embracing his full-name and his identity, his creative practice, and how he has navigated the fine art world.-About Martin Alexander Spratlen Etem-Martin Etem is a multidisciplinary artist using drawing, painting, and sculpture to survey modern society’s ideologies and sociology. Influenced by past experiences and imagination, Etem recontextualizes art history to create a visual language that embodies both a world view and personal narrative by calling attention to race, gender, value, and beauty.Learn more at https://mase-studio.tumblr.com/Or Follow him @Mase_Studio

In this episode, Tre Borden speaks with artist, Leila Weefur, whose discussion of black identity is at the center of her work and who is helping to build collectives and spaces in the Bay Area. Together, Tre and Leila ruminate on the complexities of black identity, how it is defined, for whom and by whom. This episode also dives into the double edged sword that is Black History month, and discusses Leila’s upcoming solo-show, Between Beauty & Horror, opening Friday, February 15, 2019 at Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland.**Things to Note**~22-27:30 - When discussing institutional representation and minoritarian artists, Leila Weefur quotes Gelare Khoshgozaran Referenced Spaces & Literature:Wolfman BooksBetti Ono GallerySpirithaus GalleryThe Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman-About Leila Weefur-Leila Weefur (She/They/He) is an artist, writer, and curator who lives and works in Oakland, CA. She received her MFA from Mills College. Weefur tackles the complexities of phenomenological Blackness through video, installation, printmaking, and lecture-performances. Using materials and visual gestures to access the tactile memory, she explores the abject, the sensual and the nuances found in the social interactions and language with which our bodies have to negotiate space.She is a recipient of the Hung Liu award, the Murphy & Cadogan award, and the Walter & Elise Haas Creative Work Fund. Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including SFMOMA, Southern Exposure, The Wattis, and Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, New York. Weefur is the Audio/Video, Editor In Chief at Art Practical and a member of The Black Aesthetic.Learn more about Leila Weefur by visiting www.leilaweefur.comor Follow her @SpikeLeila

Guest host, Tre Borden, launches his four part series, The Black Creative, with artist Jessa Ciel. Together they discuss Jessa's definition of an artist, what a black artist’ role is in society, what it was like for Jessa to navigate Cranbrook, her experience of making art post MFA, and how her identity factors into her response to our current social and political moment. The Black Creative theme aims to offer a glimpse into the art world from the viewpoint of a black person and offer some commentary on inclusivity and how one tries to navigate space as a black artist. -About Jessa Ciel-Jessa Ciel is a video and still artist, filmmaker, and creative director. Ciel is the creator/host of new podcast: Black Art School Graduates. She was the creative director and curator of the 10-week projection installation BEACON: Sacramento. Ciel has shown artwork at the Cranbrook Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI; the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, CA; and a number of galleries on the West and East Coasts. Her art works to  trigger empathy in relation to womanhood, charged racial relations in America, land, and personal grief. She often incorporates text, audio, video, photography, and installation to create a mixed-media "setting."Ciel is also a filmmaker who directed the short film, "Like Home" in 2018, and worked on the Oscar-nominated film LadyBird. She has an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA from Cal State LA.You can learn more about Jessa Ciel at www.iamciel.comor follow her @ArtisCiel

As we continue to explore the various factions that have shaped the state of art as we know it today, a big goal at State of the Art Podcast is inclusivity. With this in mind, we welcome guest host Tre Borden, LA-based consultant and producer, to lead this month's discussion on "The Black Creative."-About Tre Borden-Tre Borden is a Los Angeles-based placemaking consultant and producer. Tre seeks out clients and collaborators looking to produce values-based creative products that activate communities.Tre Borden/Co. works in the intersection of visual art, technology and community engagement and produces creative projects that push for progressive social change.Past projects include Beacon: Sacramento, PORTAL, Bright Underbelly and The Golden Doors Project. Tre was raised in Sacramento and attended Yale University where he received his B.A in East Asian Studies and graduated with his MBA from UC Davis Graduate School of Management. Tre resides in DTLA, and in his spare time he is an avid cook, tennis player and consumer of Netflix.You can follow Tre at @TreBordenor Tweet him @TreBorden

Continuing our exploration into the world of "Selfie Palaces," in this episode we speak with Albie Hueston, Creative Director behind Refinery29's hugely popular installation, 29Rooms. 29Rooms first emerged in 2015 as an immersive story-telling experience intended to spark conversations addressing current events with the aim of disrupting pop-culture. As one of the original immersive art experiences--around long before The Museum of Ice Cream--we ask Albie how 29Rooms is different from other "selfie palaces" and whether or not this label has affected the way the Refinery29 team approaches the curation of these experiences. We also discuss:the artists and creatives responsible for bringing 29Rooms to lifethe roll social media plays in these experiences29Rooms latest roll-out of "cellphone free" zonesand where he sees the future of art experiences headed

Untitled Panel: Viewing Art in the Digital AgePanelists: Lynn Hersman Leeson (artist), Dorothy Santos (artist & educator), and Erica Gangsei (SFMOMA)As technology continues to evolve and permeate nearly every aspect of human life, it’s only natural that our markets and culture evolve alongside it, ushering in new concepts and questions. The art world, arguably moving at a slower pace than other markets, is a delicate ecosystem grappling with what the digital age means for the arts, from redefining what art is and how viewers consume it, to who and how one profits from it. Join panelists for a lively discussion on how technology has affected the way we experience contemporary art and what this means for the future of art making and collecting.

Museums, galleries, exhibitions, and art venues at large are catering more and more to the rise of social media and being “insta-worthy.” In fact, in 2017, participants in a study by Culture Track said they would much rather be entertained than educated, and that the majority prefer social interactions, as opposed to quiet reflection, when attending cultural events like exhibitions. This month we speak with the minds behind some of the most noteworthy, grammable exhibitions, museums and venues. One such space is OneDome, an interactive arts & entertainment venue in San Francisco. Bay Area residents may be familiar with OneDome’s “The Unreal Garden” or “LMNL,” two of their mixed-media experiences using adaptive technology to create immersive and engaging worlds for visitors to explore.“The Unreal Garden” uses mixed-reality to create a surreal world overrun by lush vegetation, merging physical space, sound, projection mapping, and augmented reality. To fully experience “The Unreal Garden”, visitors must wear AR headsets; however these goggles do not impede with seeing others and interacting with fellow explorers. This allows visitors to share in the experience in real time, something OneDome prides itself on as shifting the “me” to the “we”. OneDome’s family-friendly “LMNL” is their newest exhibition offering 14 rooms of digital art which respond to and transform as visitors move through the space, allowing patrons to become a part of the artwork itself.Experiential venues like OneDome are one of several spaces bundled into the category of “selfie palaces” by the media. Today, as part of our investigation into these new venues, we speak with Leila Amirsadeghi, Chief Marketing Officer at Onedome about:The rise of experiential venues and their place in the art worldThe fine line between arts and entertainmentThe audience OneDome is catering toThe role of social mediaAnd how or why experiential venues are helping or hindering the art world

As we approach the end of the year, SOTA host, Andrew Herman, reflects on his favorite episodes from the podcast's first year in production. Today, we revisit Andrew's first episode as a host on State of the Art featuring Erica Gangsei, head of Interpretive Media at SFMOMA.-----In a city where the tension between artists and techies is palpable, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has pushed exhibitions, programs and projects that bridge the two spheres, like their inventive video series ARTIST CRIBS, their seamless museum app, and their experimental PlaySFMOMA initiative. Erica Gangsei, head of Interpretive Media at SFMOMA and a working artist in her own right, shares her thoughts on tech's place in the museum and the "art world" at large.-About Erica Gangsei-As Head of Interpretive Media at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Erica Gangsei leads a team of multimedia storytellers to create award winning digital resources such as audio tours, video interviews with artists, in-museum interpretive gallery spaces, games, and the podcast Raw Material. As a multidisciplinary artist, she is heavily involved in the Bay Area arts community, and has volunteered her time for organizations such as the Lab, Root Division, Headlands Center for the Arts and Adobe Books. Erica also has a passionate interest in games, and is the founder of the museum's PlaySFMOMA initiative, which presents pop-up arcades, game jams, lectures, workshops, and a game designer-in-residence series. She studied Philosophy and Fine Arts and Amherst College and Sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute.Follow Erica @ericagangseiTweet her @ericagangsei

As we approach the end of the year, SOTA host, Andrew Herman, reflects on his favorite episodes from the podcast's first year in production. Today, we revisit Andrew's first appearance on State of the Art as a guest. In 2014, Andrew Herman co-founded the mobile app French Girls. As the name of the app may reveal, Andrew doesn’t take himself too seriously; but he is serious about the app’s ability to introduce users to art appreciation and original art. In this episode, you'll hear SOTA founder and former host, Ethan Appleby, speak with Andrew about the process of making the French Girls app, the path to purchasing art, the cultural shifts needed to make art as popular as music, and Andrew's philosophy of not taking art "too seriously". -About Andrew Herman-Andrew Herman is co-founder of the mobile app French Girls. Now located in San Francisco, Andrew was a mechanical engineer by training from Scranton, Pennsylvania. He grew up an avid guitar enthusiast and closet art fan. In 2014, he launched Easyl, a marketplace for original art which then transpired into French girls, an app that enables users to discover and create digital art inspired by photos from the community. He is now responsible for technical oversight of the app.Find Andrew on Twitter and Instagram.  -About French Girls-Inspired by the famous Titanic line, “draw me like one of your French girls,” French Girls is a mobile app that allows anybody to transform their selfie into an original work of art. Heralded as the next Snapchat, French Girls allows users to commission artists to create works of art based on the photos they upload, and provides a unique introduction art appreciation and to the world of original art. Draw like a French Girl at their website and on the App Store

As we approach the end of the year, SOTA host, Andrew Herman, reflects on his favorite episodes from the podcast's first year in production. In this episode, we revisit our very first panel, originally recorded live from the podcast stage at SXSW on March 15, 2018. Our panelists included Erica Gangsei, head of Interpretive Media @SFMoma, Nahema Mehta, Co-Founder and CEO of Absolut Art, and (now, current SOTA host) Andrew Herman, founder of French Girls & MiniCanvas. Our panelists got on like three peas in a pod and tackled some of the major questions we try to answer here at State of the Art. Like, how has technology democratized the art world? Has has the maturation of the art ecosystem changed the experience of buying art? And what's more important, sexy work, or un-sexy work?-About Erica Gangsei-Erica Gangsei, is Manager of Interpretive Media in the Education department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She researches, writes and co-produces educational multimedia materials such as audio tours, artist video interviews, podcasts, kiosk-based and online interactive features, and onsite educational spaces. Most recently, she curated ArtGameLab, an exhibition at SFMOMA of crowd-sourced game prototypes. Her professional research interests include crowd-sourced and assignment-based artwork, alternate reality games, institutional critique, and avant-garde culture as an engine of broader social and political change. She is also a sculptor, performer, conceptual artist and stop-motion animator, and have exhibited widely in the Bay Area and nationally. She is active in the Bay Area independent art community and recently concluded a term as co-President of Board of Directors of the Lab, an interdisciplinary experimental non-profit art space in San Francisco’s Mission district. I studied Philosophy and Fine Arts at Amherst College and Sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute.-About Nahema Mehta-As cofounder and CEO of Absolut Art, Nahema spends every day bridging the gap between artists creating and people collecting by refining art buying through patented design. As a philanthropist, she work with passionate humans to empower over 100,000 young girls through education and healthcare. She's lived and worked across 4 continents and benefited from an interdisciplinary career path, having worked for Chief Justice Roberts, Merrill Lynch, and Sotheby’s before founding and exiting her own startup, Art Remba. She shares learnings along the way at conferences like Fast Company's 2017 Most Creative Minds and Innovate46 at the NASDAQ.-About Andrew Herman-Andrew Herman is co-founder of the mobile app French Girls. Now located in San Francisco, Andrew was a mechanical engineer by training from Scranton, Pennsylvania. He grew up an avid guitar enthusiast and closet art fan. In 2014, he launched Easyl, a marketplace for original art which then transpired into French girls, an app that enables users to discover and create digital art inspired by photos from the community. He is now responsible for technical oversight of the app.Find Andrew on Twitter and Instagram.  

State of the Art officially turns 1 today! As we approach the end of the year, current SOTA host, Andrew Herman, reflects on his favorite episodes from the podcast's first year of production. In this episode, we revisit our very first interview with Matty Mo, aka "The Most Famous Artist"

Recommended to us by former SOTA guest, Carla Gannis, SOTA is very excited to speak with conceptual artist, Rachel Ara, about her immersive installation, Transubstantiation of Knowledge. The holographic, mixed-reality journey, Transubstantiation of Knowledge, opened at the Victoria & Albert Museum in September 2018 installed in the V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance Galleries. The piece takes the form of an audio guide and uses a Hololens allowing visitors to interact with and hear the stories of Franciscan nuns occupying the galleries. The piece is an example of Rachel's art-making approach which selects the medium and material based on the message she wishes to convey. In this episode, Rachel explains her use of tech in Transubstantiation of Knowledge, the inspiration behind the work as well as another piece, This Much I'm Worth, her dedicated trajectory into the art world, and her thoughts on the accessibility of the arts and what it is to be an artist.-About Rachel Ara-​Conceptual and Data artist Rachel Ara graduated with a Fine Art BA from Goldsmiths College where she won the prestigious Burston award. In 2016 she won the International Aesthetica Art Prize for This Much I’m Worth [the self-evaluating artwork]. Pulling on her experiences as a computer system designer, the digital sculpture draws on data and complex algorithms to calculate its own value in real time.Her work is nonconformist with a socio-political edge that often incorporates humour and irony with feminist & queer concerns. Rachel is a Near Now Fellow, awarded to pioneering artists working in technology. She is also artist in residence at the V&A in London.Learn more hereTweet her @rachelaraFollow her @rachelara-About Transubstantiation of Knowledge-Informed by her research into the museum’s systems and data, Ara is creating a site specific mixed reality work investigating systems of knowledge and power by interweaving stories from Franciscan nuns, computer code and contemporary technologies. ​Within the chapel the installation takes the form of an audio guide with a hololens. Using the Hololens the viewer will be able to see and interact with holographic nuns in the chapel. Behind the church are cases with "false" objects mixed into the real V&A collections that substantiate the story and add more intrigue. In the whispering galleries is a soundscape formed out of the voices of the women at the V&A which interact with a giant chestnut and fibre optic loom behind the Eucharist.-About This Much I'm Worth-This much I’m worth [The self-evaluating Artwork] is a digital art piece that continually displays its sale value through a series of complex algorithms called "the endorsers". It is constructed with materials that have a history loaded with association. Implicated in the history of neon is its use in the sex trade, its cultural significance today is more commonly a trope of contemporary art. It is both a functional object and spectacle seeking to question values, worth and algorithmic bias.​

Paul Golding's extensive technical expertise coupled with his philosophical, problem-solving approach has enabled him to work on a variety of projects, with companies like Motorola, O2 UK, Acision, McLaren Applied Technologies, Navteq, Telefonica, Art.com Inc and Prosper Inc. A visionary with the know-how, skills, and respect to pickup any project, we ask Paul how he became interested in the arts. In this episode, Paul discusses his work in understanding and deconstructing people's aesthetic tastes, the challenges of selling art using e-commerce, and his take on the " “I’ll know it when I see it” approach many buyers take when selecting art for their space.-About Paul Golding-As a silicon-chip designer for Motorola, Paul invented (and patented) an AI computing technique that has been used in trillions of cellular calls. He was also a mobile software pioneer, building the world’s first wireless email system and writing several books about apps. His pioneering contribution to mobile led to the rare award of an unsponsored "genius" visa to work in Silicon Valley.Paul’s recent work involves leading the AI and blockchain R&D efforts for a leading fintech company in San Francisco and previously the design of AI techniques to model human perception of art (to boost art sales). He also built an AI platform for visual collaboration. He has created numerous innovation labs in Europe and Silicon Valley. He is also an IEE prize winner.Learn more about Paul hereTweet him @pgolding

As 2018 draws to a close, the team at State of the Art is experimenting with broadening the scope of the podcast to include all aspects of the ever-evolving “art state.” Although our primary interest remains technologically inclined, we are dabbling in opening up our discussions to include elements and viewpoints on the art world beyond the niche of tech to address current events and trends. This new approach is something we plan to seriously pursue and develop in 2019.To kick us off, we speak with Jon Burgerman, UK artist widely recognized as a professional “doodler” and considered the leading figure in the now popular Doodle art style. In this episode, Jon discusses how doodling became his signature style, what doodling is, why it seems to have resonated with so many, his use of social media as a creative tool to expand his practice, and his thoughts on the commercial versus the fine art world.-About Jon Burgerman-Jon Burgerman is a UK born, NYC based artist instigating improvisation and play through drawing and spectacle. He is a purveyor of doodles and is often credited and referenced as the leading figure in the popular 'Doodle' art style.His work is placed between fine art, urban art and pop-culture, using humor to reference and question his contemporary milieu. His is a pervasive and instantly recognizable aesthetic that exists across a multitude of forms including canvases, large scale murals (indoor and outside), sculpture, toys, apparel, design, print and people (as tattoos and temporary drawings).Burgerman studied Fine Art at The Nottingham Trent University, graduating in 2001 with First Class Honours.Read more about Jon hereFollow him @JonBurgermanTweet him @JonBurgerman

This episode is near and dear to our hearts at State of the Art as we speak with Dorka Keehn, San Francisco Arts Commissioner who chairs the city's Visual Arts Committee in charge of the city's public art scene. An artist in her own right, and a serious mover and shaker in the community, Dorka explains how the arts is an economic driver in SF, what the city is doing to help artists stay in the city, and how the committee makes decisions about the projects they commission to elevate San Francisco's streets and neighborhoods. -About Dorka Keehn-Dorka Keehn is a major force for art in the public realm in the Bay Area. She is the Principal of Keehn On Art, an art consulting firm that specializes in working with city planners, developers and architects on their public art requirements. Projects include Salesforce Tower and the Golden State Warriors Arena. As a San Francisco Arts Commissioner, Dorka chairs the Visual Arts Committee that commission’s all of the city’s public artwork. Additionally, she is the co-founder of Sites Unseen, a project that is bringing arts programming to neglected alleys in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena neighborhood. Dorka also led the fundraising effort for The Bay Lights, the $12M 25,000 LED light installation by artist Leo Villareal for the Bay Bridge.

In this throwback episode, former host, Ethan Appleby, speaks with Travis Uhrig about co-founding Curio Cards, a platform for purchasing, collecting and trading cryptoart. Travis explains the concept behind Curio Cards and the growing medium of cryptoart, how it's beneficial to artists, and why buyers are interested in collecting these digital art pieces.-About Travis Uhrig-Travis Uhrig is the lead organizer for the San Francisco Bitcoin Social meetup group, the second largest bitcoin meetup group in the world and the longest-running one to date. He is the co-founder of Curio Cards, a platform for digital trading cards on the Ethereum blockchain.Follow Travis @travisformayor

In our time exploring the intersection of art and tech on State of the Art podcast, we've spoken with a number of contemporary artists, curators, researchers and innovators incorporating new media in their practice. In this episode, we continue that exploration but take a step back with Joel Slayton, artist, curator, and educator, who has been in the scene since the 70s. Slayton's involvement in the world of art and tech for the past 40 years brings a unique point of view to SOTA, with insight into how tech as a creative medium has evolved over time and continues to do so. In this episode, we discuss what art and tech looked like in the 70s and its progression into the 21st century, Slayton's involvement in spearheading a variety of projects and programs, including Computers in Art, Design, Research, and Education at San Jose State University, and ZERO1, an art and tech network based out of Silicon Valley, and his thoughts on the art state today. -About Joel Slayton-Joel Slayton is a pioneering artist, researcher, and curator with over 35 years of experience involving art and technology. His work engages a wide range of practice including media, installation and performance and has been featured in over 100 exhibitions around the world. From 2008-2016 Joel was Executive Director of ZERO1, a Silicon Valley based arts organization where he was responsible for emerging the ZERO1 Biennial, an international exhibition program celebrating creativity and innovation in the arts. Joel is Professor Emeritus at San Jose State University where he was Founding Director of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media. He is currently is a collaborator at the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford University where he is establishing a new artists fellowship program. Joel will be curating the 5th L.A.S.T, Exhibition (Life, Art, Science, and Technology) in 2018 hosted by SLAC National Accelerator at Stanford University. Joel Slayton serves on the Board of Directors of LEONARDO/ISAST (International Society for Arts, Science, and Technology) where he was Editor-In-Chief for the Leonardo-MIT Press Book Series from 1999-2005. He served as Academic Chair for the 2006 International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA) hosted by ZERO1. Joel Slayton is a Senior Fellow of the Silicon Valley American Leadership Forum.Learn more about Joel here

In an age of rapidly evolving tech facilitating a number of things from daily tasks, to communication and research, some subjects trail behind, notably, art history. Replica aims to facilitate art historical research by using machine learning and modern image searching algorithms to help art historians navigate large iconographic collections. In short, Replica aims to go beyond the limitations of search terms and keywords and use images to enable researchers to identify visual information which may not been indexed--textual queries cannot, for example, show results for similar shapes, forms, or motifs. Replica could assist researchers in identifying visual links, pin-pointing when a specific type of iconography emerged and how it has evolved over time.In this episode, we speak with Benoit Seguin, a computer scientist helping build the Replica search engine. Seguin explains how Replica works, what the mission is, who's involved, and how it can be immensely useful to those interested in art, art history, and visual culture.-About Replica-The Replica project led by the DHLAB aims to build the first search engine designed specifically for the search and exploration of artistic collections (including paintings, drawings, engravings, sculpture and photography). This employs the latest state-of-the art artificial intelligence techniques, such as Deep Learning and Convolutional Neural Networks, for the search and display of information. In partnership with the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice and Factum Arte in Madrid, the Replica project aims to digitize roughly one million artistic reproductions using these images to populate the new search engine and as the basis for new art historical inquiries. -About Benoit Seguin- Benoit Seguin is a PhD student at the Digital Humanities Laboratory (DHLAB) at EPFL. His main interests lie in Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Image Processing. Benoit's thesis is based on the Replica Project where he implements machine learning and modern image searching algorithms to help art historians navigate large, iconographic collections. Benoit received a Master of Science from EPFL and a Diplôme d’Ingénieur from École Polytechnique.

Ashley Zelinskie uses mathematics as her primary medium, building sculptures and paintings out of numbers and code. Although visually striking to our human-eyes, these creations primarily serve to leave a record of humanity's creativity for a future where machines supplant humans. In this episode, we speak with Ashley about her mission to preserve our human heritage for an unknown future built on mathematics, why she believes math is the universal language, and what prompted her to take this mission upon herself.-About Ashley Zelinskie-Ashley Zelinskie is an artist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her work blurs the lines between art and technology, and spans a variety of media from sculpture to computer programs. After receiving a degree in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design, Ashley began to experiment with the pairing of artistic media and technology. The work she creates now is designed to be appreciated by both human and computer.This work is not for us. It is for the future. And robots. That is, each of these pieces takes for granted that computers will outlast their makers, that technology will supplant humanity, and that craft should follow suit. This is art for the Singularity. Today, rigorous science and pure math maintain unbridled influence over technology – as such, our digital heirs are slated to inherit nuanced programming and breathtaking technical specifications. Yet we would render a profound disservice by stopping at numeracy and wire: if the Earth need be handed over to machines, we must prepare them not only to be accurate and efficient, but also cultured. Robots need magic. With regard to information density, the mosaic of human social interaction and artistic endeavor is unrivaled in diversity, ambition and depth. We are bound by duty to pass culture forward yet remain constrained by limitations: how can we sufficiently communicate this history and dialog to unknown, unimaginable and unspecified replacements? This work is an attempt to answer that question and, in fact, to begin that process – the process of translating our vast artistic and social history, in familiar language and appropriate media, to machines. Using simple code, recursive structures, redundant patterns, and emergent media in novel combinations, this work transcribes humanity – for a future without it.Learn more at http://www.ashleyzelinskie.com/Tweet her @azelinskieFollow her @azelinskieCover art by Graydon Speace

Transmedia artist, Carla Gannis, is perhaps best known for her reinterpretation of art historical masterpieces in contemporary lens, replacing elements with popular iconography--aka, emojis. These tableaus include her piece, Garden of Emoji Delights (2014), a contemporary take on Hieronymus Bosch's famous masterpiece, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and, more recently, Portraits in Landscape (2018), which premiered in Times Square and is inspired by the sixteenth-century mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo. In this episode, Carla tells us about her childhood growing up in the Appalachian mountains within a family that encouraged creative expression, her shift from traditional oil painting to digital media, her journey as an artist whose medium was initially received with bias and skepticism, and why innovations like the internet excite her.-About Carla Gannis-Carla Gannis, originally from Oxford, North Carolina, today lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA in painting from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an MFA in painting from Boston University. In the late 1990s she began to incorporate digital technologies into her work, and in 2005 she was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Grant in Computer Arts. Currently she is a professor and assistant chairperson of The Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute.Gannis identifies as a visual storyteller. With the use of 21st Century representational technologies she narrates through a “digital looking glass” where reflections on power, sexuality, marginalization, and agency emerge. She is fascinated by digital semiotics and the situation of identity in the blurring contexts of real and virtual.Since 2003 Gannis’s work has appeared in over 20 solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her most recent solo exhibitions include “A Subject Self-Defined” at Transfer Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; “The Garden of Earthly Delights” at The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY and at Kasia Kay Art Projects in Chicago, IL, 2014. In 2013 she collaborated with poet Justin Petropoulos on a transmedia book, installation and net art project entitled <legend> </legend> published byJaded Ibis Press, Seattle, WA and exhibited at Transfer Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Recent group exhibitions include “Porn to Pizza – Domestic Clichés” at DAM Gallery, in Berlin Germany and “Beautiful Interfaces” at Reverse Gallery, New York, NY.Features on her work have appeared in ARTnews, The Creators Project, The Huffington Post, Wired, Buzzfeed, FastCo, Hyperallergic, Art F City, Art Critical, Art Report, The Wallstreet Journal, The New York Timesand The LA Times, among others. Recently her speculative fiction was included in DEVOURING THE GREEN:: fear of a human planet: a cyborg / eco poetry anthology, published by Jaded Ibis Press. Her recent speaking engagements include “Let’s Get Digital” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and “Cogency in the Imaginarium” at Cooper Union and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has participated in numerous panels on the intersections between art, technology, education and networked culture.Follow her @carlagannisTweet her @carlagannisLearn more at http://carlagannis.com/Cover art by Graydon Speace

On July 2, 2018, Artnet published the article "Why Are Artists Poor? New Research Suggests It Could Be Hardwired Into Their Brain Chemistry" bringing our attention to the research of Dr. Roberto Goya-Maldonado and his team. In this episode, we ask Dr. Goya-Maldonado to explain how the study was conducted, the implications of their findings, where he plans on taking the study, and other artist-related correlations he is interested in investigating.