Technical feelings

Texas – A new video artwork by Institute for New Feeling explores fresh emotional responses to familiar technology.

The exhibition, This is Presence, includes a newly commissioned video, which has been submitted to Whitechapel Gallery’s Artists’ Film International season
The artist collective’s work explores the evolution of feelings and new ways of seeing and experiencing the world

The 17-minute video work from the Institute for New Feeling (IfNf), This is Presence (2016), presents viewers with a scrolling Facebook-type interface filled with close-ups of images that evoke sensations beyond the visual, from thousands of buzzing bees clustering round a hive to smooth skin being rubbed against smooth skin. The film is the centrepiece of a new exhibition of the same name hosted at Ballroom Marfa, a non-profit-making contemporary art space in Texas focusing on art and technology.

A second IfNf work will enable visitors to explore the future of online shopping in an immersive virtual reality experience, which will be shown alongside objects from the Institute’s series of playful products, including items such as edible mochi earplugs. The exhibition will also feature two micro-exhibitions with work by 16 artists whose works all incorporate or take inspiration from technology.

Ballroom Marfa curator Laura Copelin tells LS:N Global: ‘Art opens up a space of play and invention, allowing for ideas about the future of technology that fall outside the commercial realm.’

The Big Picture:

As the influence of technology in our lives continues to grow, art is responding to this trend by highlighting the importance of our emotional responses to data. To read more, see our macrotrends Awakening Tech and The E-motional Economy.