Babs Smith Greater Manchester, United Kingdom
I am a multidisciplinary artist based at Ebor Studios, Rochdale. I am a recent graduate Scholar of UOS Art collection where I have work housed. I am the winner of a People’s Choice award at Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival and was nominated for a Create Art & Design Award UOS. I am currently completing a light sculpture for Smart DCC Mcr.
I work with physical and virtual materials to travel between online and offline processes. I re-present the 2D in 3D and vice versa to extract something that I know exists in an abstract sculptural form. I explore subjects such as movement, light, energy, sound and time, in the landscape of the Anthropocene. Utilising programs such as AI, AR and VR, my hand makes a visceral direct contact as far as is possible in with the medium; virtual drawing in VR with an Oculus Rift or translating images through AI and into AR. I respond to the same subject in a traditional medium such as painting, print or sculpture with a ‘what if’ process, jumping in and out of both methods to deepen my understanding. I liken this to our unique combinations of daily digital and IRL immersion, and the extent to which we are unknowingly affected by Artificial Intelligence.
Collaboration with artists, musicians, architects, and researchers creates a new landscape in which the online and offline can be straddled. Decisions are challenged, assumptions exposed and the digital permeable layer that exists between the two, is pushed to its limits in a process of thinking through materials. This co-art begins with a shared experience or thirst for knowledge; How can this manifest and translate visually to communicate our perception of the world around us as we endeavour to explore that place of inertia in which we currently stand? Listening and engaging in conversation with viewers completes my work and drives me forward.
