C/Change Creative R&D Lab Grant
I am excited to announce that the Missing Objects Library project I am co-creating with artists Jill Miller and Kathy Wang has been awarded a generous grant from C/Change’s Creative R&D Lab.
Five teams will receive funding and support to develop interactive online prototypes that embody feminist technologies, digital democracies, and planetary futures, creating virtual experiences, tools, and platforms that promote cultural exchange.
Missing Objects Library: Unfinished Proposal Image. With Jill Miller and Kathy Wang, 2023
Missing Object Library (MOL) is a curated, web-based repository of handmade 3D objects that are designed with an intersectional, feminist lens. MOL offers an alternative to commercial, status quo storefronts that provide digital assets for game design and special effects. Objects sold in these spaces are typically devoid of provenance, and they continually reinscribe false notions of neutrality while privileging white, cis, heteronormative dominance. In contrast, MOL is an open platform with downloadable models that accurately represent the world we inhabit. MOL disrupts historical gatekeeping performed by “neutral” marketplaces by offering 3D modeled objects that span a wide range of identities, abilities, and affinities. In addition to critiquing existing 3D model storefronts, MOL builds community by offering an economic system of reciprocity, where technological representations of things are exchanged to produce meaningful relations and effects.
MOL is a collaboration between three artists who form a dynamic, diverse, and audacious team dedicated to the exploration of emerging technologies. Asma Kazmi, an artist blending physical and virtual spaces, explores the intertwining histories of Western colonialism and her diasporic Muslim culture through transgressive curatorial tactics, experimental museums, and the use of Islamic display devices. Jill Miller, an art professor and feminist intersectional artist, employs humor and technology to spark meaningful conversations about challenging subjects, creating comical spectacles that propose impossible solutions to social problems. Kathy Wang, a talented designer and creative technologist, focuses on AR/VR and AI to create captivating human-computer interactions, inspiring others to explore their potential with feminist technologies and pushing the boundaries of art in the digital realm.
Read more about the projects selected for this year’s Creative R&D Lab.
C/Change is implemented by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco in cooperation with Gray Area, a San Francisco-based nonprofit cultural incubator, and funded by the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Missing Objects Library is supported by a 2023 Faculty Seed Grant from the Berkeley Center for New Media.
