Artifacts from the Art + AI Research Group
Bio
Jenn Karson is a native Vermonter who works with a strong sense of place. She has performed on stage, in bars, basements, garages, and at the drive-in. She creates both indoor and outdoor installations for urban and rural locations and exhibits in both galleries and nontraditional places of display. Karson is on on the faculty of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Vermont (UVM) and has an active social practice that includes her roles as director of the FabLab and the Art & Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Group at UVM. Trained as a vocalist and musician, she released four original recordings with the alternative rock bands Zola Turn and Bad Ju Ju.
Karson received an MFA in Design and Technology with honors from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA in Political and Environmental Sciences at the University of Vermont.
Artist Statement
My art practice is inspired by sharing time and creating social space with others – making new things happen. As a social practice this takes the form of team and collaborative projects, teaching, educational programs, opportunities for reciprocity, and performance.
In my work with sound and other ephemerals, I’m interested in the possibilities of ethereal and transitional qualities that allow the formless influence while moving transparently through time and space. What can a deep exploration of our daily soundscapes reveal? How do the temporal and the spatial describe what is without form?
In my exploration of these questions I consider the textures of recording, scoring, mapping, projection, observation, documentation, and programming to design installations that are suspicious of the sublime while they navigate the shifting negotiations of natures and cultures.