The Dark Arts?
“Your art is so dark.” I hear that a lot.”
explosion on an alien planet?
“Your art is so dark.” I hear that a lot. “Not always,” is my response. But I can’t deny that much of what I’ve posted on Instagram and Facebook for LEVL9 tends that way. In part—although the project dates back to 2016—like the virus it grew exponentially during quarantine and from the need for escapism I felt in our political upheavals of 2020.
The fantasy world is dark and rich. As children, we thrilled to frightening fairy tales; as adults many of us love crime and corruption in our TV series. Science fiction and steampunk rely on ambiguity, futurism, machinery and atmosphere.
Because I loved dark painters like Degas, Velazquez and Bosch as a child, that impulse has always been with me. It doesn’t mean I “went to the dark side” as a person, nor that I can’t create lovely and uplifiting imagery. But I do offer you a chance to enter a fantasy world of “elemental forces colliding in pan-dimensional space,” as my work has been dubbed, and I urge you to enter it with a dreamlike sense of adventure. Like an orchid cactus, some things bloom at night. See you there.
It’s Happening!
LEVL9 is proud to be part of CURRENTS New Media Festival 2021. We debut our new movie today at the Southwest’s most prestigious show of experimental and electronic art! It all kicks off today, June 18 and runs until June 27. Virtual reality! Augmented reality! Videos! Performances! Soundscapes! Interactive art!
You’ve enjoyed CURRENTS for years at El Museo in the Santa Fe Railyard. After a year of adjustment and learning new ways to connect, CURRENTS 2021 will be both online and at CCA Santa Fe, Currents 826 gallery, the Railyard Park and other spots around Santa Fe.
CURRENTS returns to The Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) 19 years after its inaugural festival there in 2002. In-person exhibits will happen at CCA’s Tank Garage Gallery, with precautions taken for the health of visitors and staff. The 25 artworks on view include interactive installations, multimedia performances, new media sculpture and virtual/augmented reality pieces. Click here for more about the CCA show.
CURRENTS Virtual: Most of the 2021 festival will be online, with a fun new interactive platform. Visitors can talk and video chat with one another, take a virtual train ride and experience desktop, virtual reality and video works, as well as an amazing lineup of live-stream performances —from the comfort of their own homes all over the world!
Virtual Festival opens noon MT, June 18th and remains live 24 hours a day until June 27th. This is where to see our movie!
Click here to view the online show and our new movie!
Our short movie ‘Digital Zoetrope’ infuses modern tech with Old World aesthetics to lure you into an engaging 17-minute ride through real and imagined landscapes with original soundtrack. Join us on the ride, and give us some love and feedback on either the CURRENTS site or this blog—your involvement makes a big difference as the art world ‘reopens’ locally and globally. Enjoy!
LEVL9/Digital Zoetrope
Sasha Pyle: digital art and images
Julie DeFeo: production and sound
Jamie Chase: percussion
Digital Zoetrope Project
Good News at LEVL9!
Our collaborative film project “Digital Zoetrope” has been accepted to CURRENTS New Media Festival 2021. Animated sequences of LEVL9 images and original percussion by artist/drummer Jamie Chase, are edited together by producer Julie DeFeo into an immersive looping movie that will be seen in the virtual exhibition, in the physical show at Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe—and possibly projected outdoors at CCA. We’re delighted to play a part in the Southwest’s most prestigious new media show. Stay tuned for schedule and links!
Shaped by Our Optic Nerves
LEVL9 welcomes you to the Departure Lounge. That’s the name of our blog and upcoming publications. This website is dedicated to exploring digital art - but that’s just one of the inspirations the Lounge wants to offer you.
Let’s talk about art that has influenced us.
We’ve all had the experience of revisiting a beloved children’s book and realizing how carefully our younger selves studied the illustrations. Or an old comic book.
Think about the murals you drive by, the upholstery fabrics at your grandparents’ house, the colors you wanted to wear to school.
“CHOOSE YOUR INFLUENCES BEFORE THEY CHOOSE YOU.”
These were the wise words of Flora Natapoff, my favorite painting teacher. What did she mean? I’d translate that as an acknowledgement that we are porous, constantly taking in sights that affect us and how we see the world, and that we should be careful what we feed our eyes— not take in too much aesthetic junk food.
I’ll go first, but I’d love to hear from you too. I really liked dark and somber art as a kid. Weird, huh? I loved Bosch and Breugel, Degas, Velazquez, Manet and painters who used a lot of black and shadowy tones. Later I went crazy over Japanese woodblock prints, typography/calligraphy, expressionism, brutalism and mid-century modernism. I still love constructivism and early twentieth-century Soviet arts. (In a later post I might talk about totalitarianism and design.) Maybe my biggest love is Cubism.
I’ve spent decades painting, printmaking, drawing, making mosaics and assemblages and doing “applied arts” like sign painting, graphics and publications as my “day jobs.”
And now I got all excited about digital art and the possibilities it offers to create imagery that still touches on all those other influences.
Am I done being influenced? No. Are you? I hope not. More later, friends.
LEVL9 in Santa Fe, NM, USA, Planet Earth.