MOVING BEYOND THE ALGORITHM: THE NEAR FUTURE OF HUMAN-CENTRIC CREATIVITY
WEDNESDAY, SEP 18
3:00PM — 6:00PM
UNION HALL ART SPACE (INSIDE THE COLORADAN)
151 ATTENDING
Explore the role of creativity, experimentation, and innovation as essential aspects of art-making with an engaging discussion set against the backdrop of the dynamic Union Hall Art Space. We will focus on how the most imaginative and unconventional art can drive inspiration and how regular practice, free from the constraints of what is deemed "good," leads to truly impactful work. Technology, viewed as a tool to enhance our ideas rather than replace human insight, serves to amplify our innate ability to dream and innovate, but it cannot replace the unique essence of our originality.
1.5 hr panel discussion with Q&A. Followed by a 1.5 hr happy hour in the art space.
In partnership with Denver Startup Week and Union Hall.
This discussion will be moderated by Sharifa Lafon of Denver Digerati in conversation with Nima Bahrehmand and Phillip David Stearns for Denver Startup Week in partnership with Union Hall.
Nima Bahrehmand
Nima Bahrehmand is an artist, scholar, and educator. His artistic research explores bodies, archives, and places that became suppressed and desertified due to being subjugated by political, economic, and technological progress. Via a digital voyage, he builds worlds that allow relocating the desertified from their initial setting into a new environment or platform, thus allowing the creation of new stories about them. Working with emergent media, he interrogates technology that claims accessibility, fairness, and welfare. He creates discursive ties around redefining and reworking data, unraveling how the databasing apparatuses service the dominance of the Global North in order to extract and manipulate the dignity of the Global South.
His artworks have been included in exhibitions and venues, including Digital Native as part of the Tbilisi Oxygen Biennial, Tbilisi, Georgia; ISEA, International Symposium for Electronic Arts, Barcelona; Denver Digerati, Denver; Kandovan Gallery, Tehran, Iran; Kunstraum Potsdam, Berlin; Marres, Maastricht, Netherland; Kiosk, Ghent, Belgium; VAC, Austin and AG Gallery, Tehran; among others. He also published some of his writing in outlets such as MAST, the Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, xCoAx, Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, Porto; Institute of Network Culture, Amsterdam; and RAI, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
Nima received his BFA from the University of Kerman, Iran; MA from the School of Art, Ghent, Belgium; MFA in studio art (Transmedia) from the University of Texas at Austin, and Ph.D. in Emergent Technology and Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado Boulder. Nima is currently an assistant professor of art at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Phillip David Stearns
Phillip David Stearns is a Denver based artist whose practice deals with themes that include the impacts of contemporary information systems, electronics and communications technology, emerging materials and hybrid processes. Through playful experimentation, deconstruction, and reconfiguration, Phillip engages these themes to reveal the obscured or invisible, and give form to the intangible. He approaches technology as a critical medium, positioning it in a way that is self-reflexive to seek out the sublime in the mundane.
Phillip is a Greene Fellowship recipient for 2024. His projects have been featured in WIRED, The Huffington Post, VICE Motherboard, The Creators Project, Hyperallergic, and FRAME. His work has been exhibited internationally by institutions including the Zhongzhou Art Museum, Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, Haus der Elektronischen Künste Basel, Park Avenue Armory, ELEKTRA-BIAN, Tate Britain, Transmediale, Anyang Public Art Project, Festival de Arte Digital (FAD), FILE, and Transitio MX.
Phillip has taught as adjunct professor at the University of Denver’s Emergent Digital Practices program, Parsons School of Design Design + Technology program, NYU IDM, NYIT, and led a seminar on the digital dark age at Hochschule Düsseldorf. He holds an MFA in music from the California Institute of the Arts and a BS in music from the University of Colorado in Denver.
In 2012, Phillip Stearns founded GlitchTextiles, a textile design studio dedicated to exploring the intersections of digital art and jacquard weaving. In 2023 he launched Pickl.art, a weave on demand platform that allows anyone to create their own custom woven products.
https://phillipstearns.com | Facebook | Instagram | X
https://glitchtextiles.com | Facebook | Instagram | X
