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This collaboration between Desiree D'Alessandro and Nikki Leone was inspired by T.C. Boyle's National Bestselling Book Riven Rock. It was exhibited at the Historic McCormick House in Santa Barbara, CA.
The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched. This concept is applied to Riven Rock, as this estate was Stanley's permanent residence of confinement due to his severe state of mental health. His devoted wife Katherine frequently monitored his progress with binoculars from afar. Simultaneously, Stanley's encounters with the outside world were closely monitored and restricted. Unfortunately, he could not escape his tormented condition nor his surveillance.
Projection Video for Riven Rock: Panopticon. Eye models featuring Desiree D'Alessandro and Raymond Douglas.
This series is a digitally reproduced inventory/archive of deteriorated texts discovered in the Mojave Desert. The found residue have been transformed by the desert ecology and rendered unfamiliar, anomalous and strange: the ghosts in the machine of the desert. These materials collected by Desiree DAlessandro and J.R. Valenzuela (UCLA) exist as an inventory of offerings issued by the desert, as if the desert had consciousness and had spoken in sentences corresponding to the syntax of a roaming trajectory through a largely trackless terrain—a geo(ethno)graphic testimony: a statement from the dry mouth of Wonder Valley.
This work is now part of the UC Sweeney Art Gallery permanent collection.
This multi-media installation feature's D'Alessandro's first remix video completed where UCSB immediately charged her with a DMCA violation. Surrounding the remix monitor, print-outs of all revolving e-mail, chat, and web correspondences are presented where the artist and faculty attempted to petition the decision and defended her work in the name of Fair Use. This installation shares with the viewer the active research involved in identifying organizations that assist artists in their exploration to better understand their artistic rights and defenses when working with copy-written content in the name of fair use.
Desiree D’Alessandro, Rebecca Levine, and Se Young have synthesized their expertise in a curious, collaborative work that provokes discourse on issues of sustainability, simulacra, and sense of self. Their generated lab is constructed strictly from recycled materials: collected glass jars, UCSB potable irrigation water waste, and cloned succulent clippings. Through induced vegetative propagation of botanical organisms, the work investigates ethical and social anxieties regarding the human relationship with empowered institutions, including UCSB as site for stem cell research and biotechnological advances. The interactive lab was ultimately deconstructed and the cloned succulents were distributed to the public as take-away artifacts that construct further reflection and inquiry.
Dys[Topic] Lab Mice Installation Video
This work, most recently exhibited at the USF Contemporary Art Museum and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, consists of a series of flipbooks, thaumatropes, and over ten thousand toy soldiers that embody a child-like playfulness upon encounter. After interaction, the work’s demeanor shifts from whimsical to serious as the animations contain unsettling political references. Because the works are based on interaction, the viewers cannot address the works without addressing themselves. The work investigates a rich, political terrain by creating an environment where viewers become physical activators of mediated footage, rather than passive bystanders. Where the objects yield footage from the past, the installation’s engagement with the public encourages a progressive examination of the present and the future.
Affliction Pedestal Video Excerpt
This is an ongoing performative and participatory project that was the focus of my BFA thesis exhibition at the West Tampa Center for the Arts. This series documents participants on late night walks through their neighborhood. Project documentation produces materials such as night-vision videos, satellite location maps, stream-of-consciousness tape recordings, and transcripts that are utilized in a physical installation and a corresponding web component. PSWT explores the thoughts, fears, and prompted memories of each participant’s psychoscape as they engage their physical environment in unaccustomed circumstances. The project further explores their willingness and/or reluctance to subject themselves to behaviors in which familiar environments and experiences become estranged.
Excerpts from PROJECT SLEEP WALK/TALK Participant walk & Participant projection grid.
An installation that utilizes live compositing effects and feedback. Viewers were invited to step in front of the blue screen and camera in order to see themselves superimposed against the backdrops of the major tourist attractions of Paris, France – the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe, and the Pantheon. The nature and intrinsic spectacle of this piece references writings by Jean Baudrillard (Simulacrum and Simulation) and Guy Debord (The Society of the Spectacle) as it further explores my residual anxieties surrounding the time I spent in Paris as a genuine/authentic encounter.
Paris Simulation Blue Screen Backdrop Video
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