All Together Now: North Texas Universities Collaborate on New Media Artwork Exhibit

Two works by Meadows students will be featured in the 2014 Student New Media Art Exhibition at the Dallas Contemporary, opening Friday, April 25, 2014. The show brings together examples of student work in new media and creative computation programs from the SMU Center of Creative Computation, University of Texas at Dallas Arts and Technology Program and University of North Texas CVAD Studio Art Department. All three programs focus on emerging artistic methods; the SMU Center for Creative Computation program emphasizes computer programming, using code as the primary medium.

Katherine Habeck, an SMU B.F.A. Studio Art and B.A. Creative Computation double major (’15), contributed a complex 3-D modeled landscape inspired by geopolitical issues happening near the Texas-Mexico border. “The project began with an interest in landforms and body forms,” says Habeck. “I wanted to inscribe a figure on the land, to test scales, confuse the viewer, and ultimately elevate the human form to the size of geologic processes.”

Created using Maya software, Habeck’s series of images focuses on femicide in and around the Ciudad Juarez area and involves the influences of drug cartels, the corruption of local government and the overall challenged status of women in an industrial city with strong patriarchal instincts. She modeled the landscape from a displacement map of the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. “I embedded the relief image of a female body circling the map,” says Habeck. “My hope is that the transition from land to body remains somewhat ambiguous at first, until the final form of the woman emerges, the border sitting on top of a crisis beyond control.”

The Dallas Contemporary show also includes work by SMU student Caitlin Reinhart (B.F.A. in Studio Art and B.A. in Creative Computing, ’16). “My piece is based on input from sensors that gather information from the people around it,” says Reinhart. “It will then take that data and convert it into a graphic that continually changes as more data is gathered. The physical part of it is a 3-D printed cube that will also have LEDs that change color as the data changes.”

“We are thrilled and appreciate the efforts of Dallas Contemporary to provide a space for our students to exhibit their work,” says SMU Center for Creative Computation Visiting Professor Yong Bakos. “Exhibition is a critical part of our creative computing program, and we're proud of Katherine, Caitlin and other students who get to be a part of this opportunity. We hope to continuously find additional opportunities for students to display their work.”

The Dallas Contemporary is located at 161 Glass Street, Dallas, Texas 75207. The telephone number is 214-821-2522.