CATS+ 1.0

About

This residency session was part of the CATS+ program and ran from April to September 2022. For the inaugural CATS+ residency session, 3 pairs of artists spent the summer glitching normalized systems by creating their own user experiences. The artist pairs were Aryel René Jackson and Alex Goss; Andie Flores and Sam Lavigne; and Celine Lassus and Mark Yoder.

Projects

APD Decruitment

Andie Flores and Sam Lavigne’s multimedia abolitionist campaign, APD Decruitment, explores productive alternatives for the city by upending police recruitment strategies. The artists used “real fakes” to hack politicians using the Cameo platform, build a discount program, and create functional resources including motivational posters and recommended reading.

Onward

Aryel René Jackson and Alex Goss reimagine the physical exhibition venue, Cage Match Project, as an expanded digital/physical hybrid space. Their case study, Onward, features a playable 3D simulation that illustrates the barrier-breaking capacity for change of The Cage in its new form.

What's on your mind, user?

Celine Lassus and Mark Yoder’s video game What’s on your mind, user? takes us deep into a social network fever dream, scrutinizing how the structure and design of social sites (from Facebook to 4chan) influence the group behaviors, language, and aesthetic preferences of their users.

Resident Bios

Aryel René Jackson

Aryel René Jackson is a Black creole anti-disciplinary film-based artist whose practice considers land and landscape as sites of internal representation. Themes of transformation are embedded in their use of repurposed imagery and objects, video, sound, and performance. Jackson’s work is influenced by their afro-creole Lwizyan heritage and Black American cultural language. They live and work in Texas and teach at Texas State University and at The University of Texas at Austin. Jackson is an alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Royal College of Art Exchange Program, and The Cooper Union. Their work has been shown nationally and internationally. arielrenejackson.com

Alex Goss

Alex Goss is a sculptor, educator, and freelancer committed to fostering mentorship in digital and physical 3D and time-based mediums. Drawing inspiration from manufacturing waste, Goss creates projects that breach the logic of mass production by emphasizing unconformity and cast-offs. Alex received his BFA in Art from the Cooper Union and his MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. Alex has held solo exhibitions in New York, Baltimore, and Houston. Alex is a co-founder and organizer of Moonmist, an artist-run project space in Houston, TX. He lives in Richmond, VA with his dog Butterbean. alexgoss.net

Andie Flores

Andie Flores (she/her) is a performance artist, comedian, and writer who uses embarrassment as a medium for investigating hypervisibility in a racialized body. andieflores.com

Sam Lavigne

Sam Lavigne is an artist and educator whose work deals with data, surveillance, cops, natural language processing, and automation. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design at UT Austin. lav.io

Celine Lassus

Celine Lassus (b. 1999, Tampa, FL) (she/they) is a digital native first, artist second. Based in Austin, TX, they work across new media, performance, video and installation. Her practice reflects on the promise of a technological utopia and how terribly they’ve been let down. celinelassus.com

Mark Yoder

Mark Yoder (b.1999) is a retired micro celebrity, designer, and artist based in Los Angeles. When he's not doomscrolling on TikTok, you can find him somewhere stuck at the intersection of art and technology. @markyoder.designs

Events

Exhibition

Are UXperienced

09.24.22–10.01.22

The experiment is to push back on technology. The experience is the Collaborative Art + Technology Situation (CATS+), a new program at The Museum of Human Achievement which pairs artists and tech wizards to collaborate on projects and share their processes. are UXperienced? is an invitation to get curious, start conversations, dig into artists’ processes, and get excited about making our own systems (or just making our own memes 😜 ).

Workshops

Making Something Real That Seems Fake

CATS+ Summer Workshop Series presents:

The Austin Police Department Decruiting Information Session and Telethon: Making Something Real that Seems Fake with Andie Flores and Sam Lavigne

In this workshop, artists Andie Flores and Sam Lavigne will discuss the process behind their recent work "The APD Decruiting Initiative", a multimedia public service campaign that aims to prevent potential recruits from joining the Austin Police Department, and to convince existing police officers to quit their jobs. After the talk, the artists will lead participants in a telethon to support the project's reward card program. We'll also have materials for participants to make bumper stickers for the campaign. (Style question - link the things that are linked or not?)

The Collaborative Art + Technology Situation (CATS+) is a residency and community program at MoHA that encourages thoughtful, critical, creative engagement with technology. The CATS+ Residency Program pairs artists and tech wizards to collaborate on new projects and share their process. We host collaborations, artist-led workshops, hangouts, and a wiki to remove the mystery from tech and make magic together. ,

Memes and Machines

AI. Memes. HTML. Buffoonery. Come goof around at this workshop where artists Celine Lassus and Mark Yoder will walk you through the process of using AI art generators to create memes and word soup. Then using these elements, participants will be introduced to the basics of creating a website and destroying it on purpose.

Bring a laptop, if you have one. If you need to borrow one, we'll have some available. ,

Professional Practice Planning: Finding the 5E model in your art practice

Artists and educators will learn about the science-oriented inquiry-focused method and apply it to their art process. Anti-disciplinary film-based artist, Ariel René Jackson, and sculpture, moving-image, and installation artist, Alex Goss, will highlight how the 5E model has occurred in their prior collaboration, Inside Out, to their current CATS+ Residency project, Onward. Attendees will be encouraged to review and discuss their own practice in relation to the 5E model.