Join us as we light up the night! On the eve of the International Day of Light, and the second to last weekend to see the show, we will be hosting open hours of Altered Light at night so that you can see this collection of holograms and projected videos in their true glory. These works are truly spectacular, especially without the distraction daytime glare or reflection. We will also be showing River of Light, a pop-up outdoor laser installation by artist August Muth. This celebratory installation will reveal light’s material character while allowing for physical interaction.
We are allowing a limited number of visitors in the gallery at a time for COVID safety, but doors will be open and guests will be welcome to linger outside on our front porch and watch the laser light display!
Join us in conversation with Linda Law, Executive Director of the Center for the Holographic Arts, (HoloCenter), and August Muth of the Santa Fe holography studio, The Light Foundry, on May 2nd at 11am MT. Linda and August will explore “The Art of Casting Light” in a live discussion on the essence of Holography. This event is a collaboration between CURRENTS New Media and the HoloCenter in support of Altered Light and the Center for the Holographic Art’s new Webinar series and upcoming online courses about Holography. ** Registration required for this online discussion: REGISTER HERE**
For more information, visit the Facebook Event page.
For more than 35 years Muth has been an internationally exhibiting artist and a pioneer in the exploration of light through holography. His interest in light began at the age of 16 when he began making large water-filled glass prisms. In 1973 he left Albuquerque to work as a jewelry maker in Aspen, Colorado, where he became captivated by the diffractive color of opals and diamonds. In 1975 he began his studies in art, physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico, and later continued at the University of Houston, and the University of Texas at Austin.
Moving to New York City in 1978 he continued his independent studies into the physics of light. In 1980 he began his holographic studies at The Museum Of Holography in Soho under Fred Unterseher. Relocating to the Telluride, Colorado area in 1985 he constructed his first holographic studio, spending the next 7 years honing his skills in the Denisyuk single-beam holography technique. During this time his interest in the relationship between light, space, and time intensified, requiring a studio expansion. In 1994 he reconstructed his studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In Santa Fe the desire to produce larger holograms became a priority. For the next several years he spent thousands of hours developing techniques to realize his aspirations. After a pivotal insight which resulted in the discarding and total metamorphosis of previously learned processes, he was able to create holograms in a greater scale. Today Muth continues to produce works exploring the light-space-time intricacies in his Santa fe, New Mexico studio.
Fred Unterseher is a pioneer of holography. Unterseher is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute and did graduate work in Consciousness and the Arts at John Kennedy University. As a member of ANT FARM an art/media collective he contributed during the dome and inflatable years. He was a pioneering member of the San Francisco School of Holography and now has over 45 years working with holography as an art medium.
He considers holography to offer an opportunity for exploring relationships between science/technology and art/consciousness. His views are based on his remark “All we see is light related to space/time, which the eye/brain decodes into “meaningful” information.” He views art as a condition that enhances and expands the experience of self-transformation. Combining holography with other media he expresses concepts and explores ideas covering light, kinetics, consciousness, visual perception, science, and community.
He has exhibited and lectured internationally and has artworks in numerous public and private collections.
At the age of five, Yuge Zhou 周雨歌 became a household name in China as the singer for ‘Little Dragon Boy (小龙人)‘, one of the most popular children’s series in Chinese TV history. Yuge studied drawing under Chinese contemporary painter Kaixi Cui 崔开玺and eventually moved into Video Artafter earning her Master of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Yuge’s work addresses connections, isolation and longing across urban and natural environments. She creates immersive experiences through digital collaging and sculptural reliefs. Yuge also directs and curates the 3300-square foot 150 Media Stream, a unique public digital art installation in Chicago. In addition to her MFA, she holds a masters degree in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University.
Yuge has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including the Grand Rapids Art Museum; Elmhurst Art Museum; Spartanburg Art Museum; Ars Electronica at Linz, Austria; Chicago Cultural Center; SIGGRAPH Asia in Kobe, Japan; Microscope Gallery in NY among many others. Yuge’s work has been featured in various publications such as the New York Magazine, HYPEBEAST, and The Atlantic Monthly. Yuge received the Santo Foundation Individual Artist Award in 2017 and Honorary Mention in the 2020 Prix Ars Electronica. She is currently an artist at NEW INC, the world’s first museum-led incubator for art, technology and design founded by New Museum.
“I consider myself a conceptually-driven crafts-person, using honed skills in common and unique crafts to confront and enhance modes of perception. A destabilization of strongly held perceptual beliefs can alter the simplex modes of thought which are handed to us, allowing for a complex—or further, multiplex—constellation of new thought to arise. The processes I investigate cover a broad range: from those produced with the generally available tools of digital and analog image making; weaving, sewing, and other fiber arts; installation and performance; as well as specialty crafts like holography.
The underlying theme that drives these investigations and creations is an inquiry of perceptual reality through light. Light can be seen as both a metaphorical, textual substance, as well as the physical conception of emitted radiation waveforms. Spectral imagery is especially important to the environments and objects which manifest through my creative process as it lays bare the simultaneous complexity and order which pervades our existence. The act of adding a refraction, diffraction, or reflection to a scene, a view, or a concept opens the multiplicitous reality which inhabits even the simplest of things. My commitment to a spectral outlook often brings together disparate materials in unconventional ways to examine the basic elements which vision and sight are based upon.”
C Alex Clark came into this existence in Wichita, Ks (1988), and currently resides in Santa Fe, NM. They graduated with a BFA in Photography from Santa Fe university of Art and Design (2014) and completed their MFA in the Low-Residency program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018). They presently work as an assistant and collaborator with August Muth —a world-renowned hologram artist.
Joan Stango is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has spanned the visual and performing arts. Her visual art practice encompasses the process-rich mediums of printmaking and holography. Both of these techniques possess a similarity in the use of a matrix to produce images.
Stango’s compositions explore concepts of transformation, expressing the continuously shifting states of being, and how these states harmonize with our perceptions. Within her method, impressions and representations of things in the world evolve into resonant relationships. These works are unfolding metaphoric collages often possessing a delicate beauty.
Stango received a BFA in sculpture in 1980 from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, followed by graduate work in sculpture and installation art at UNM, Albuquerque. During graduate school, an interest in new music and performance led her to discover the classical dance and music traditions of India. From 1982-1992 she was a practitioner and performer of the Odissi style of Indian classical dance, and has studied North Indian raga and devotional music since 1984.
Within the past 10 years she has been involved in collaborative music projects, composing, performing, and recording original vocal works. Her composition, “Devaprayag,” for voice and harmonium, was part of the holographic installation, “Infinite Thread,” created with artist August Muth at the Currents New Media Festival in 2018.
The driving force in Dora Tass’ research and practice are objects that display visual poetry, historic memory and, as defined by the artist, “la poetica dell’assenza” (the poetics of absence).
The artist takes inspiration from Dadaism and Surrealism by merging memories and collecting objects that are obsolete, yet very familiar. The sense of sacred and surreal in these complex and beautiful works clearly evokes George Bataille’s gap between the imaginary and the real, which he brought forth in the surreal art magazine “Documents”.
The dismembered elements, in her work, are juxtapositions of a ghostly past, enclosed in a surreal present that represent an archeological archive of the future. Therefore, we are led to perceive the notion of time in new ways that confuse us and leave us speechless.
From the artist:
“In 2012, I attended the International Symposium of Display Holography at MIT lab. Currently, I collaborate with the American light artist August Muth working at the hololab “The Light Foundry” in Santa Fe, NM, where I create my Holographic Light Artworks combined with sculptures installations.
Through my work with holography medium, which is a recording medium similar to the early photography early 900s, I can record the three-dimensional shape of pure light of objects overlapped together, creating a paradox in the perception. I play tricks on the senses, destabilizing one’s perception mixing real objects and holograms, which change based on where the viewer stands, provoking visual and cognitive short-circuits. The physicality of earthly materials are transformed in “light sculptures”, nonmaterial because are without gravity, but because the quality of holographic light is tangible, light reveal itself as a real material, as the stone for a sculpture.
Alison Nitkiewicz is a silkscreen, installation, and video artist living in Santa Fe, NM. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Printmaking in 2013. She spent 4.5 years as a resident of the Dirt Palace, a feminist artist collective in Providence, RI. After 9 years of being heavily involved in Providence’s art and music community, she decided to switch things up and explore new horizons by moving west to Santa Fe. She has shown work at Harvard University, the RISD Museum and internationally. Her work deals with themes of femininity, artificiality, vanity, queerness and embodiment. Alison is also Operations Manager (and more!) at CURRENTS New Media.
