still from digital animation, Kristin Lucas, 2017
UT Austin Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Kristin Lucas, is presenting Show #30: Kristin Lucas at And/Or Gallery. In Show #30, Lucas creates an immersive, mediated environment of electronic and computational works that express intense fascination with flamingos and deep concerns about climate change.
Despite the flamingo’s symbolic and mythical status, the species and its wetland habitats are continually threatened by human activity. In the range of works presented in Show #30, Lucas draws on her extensive research with flamingo experts and conservationists to shift this traditionally human-centered worldview in favor of a more ethical interspecies kinship. Viewers will be invited to embody and interface with these birds of paradise, but the media enabling these rare encounters - augmented reality, laser, neon, and other moving image technologies - will be as unstable and ethereal as the flamingo's future; showing the power of technology to dehumanize and its capacity to connect. Some of this work recently premiered at the Endgadget Experience: Alternative Realities event in Los Angeles, which awarded Lucas a grant to produce a mixed reality flamingo experience.
Also on view will be video works from Lucas’ Sole Soaker and Sick Waves series, both of which capture the unease and turmoil created by rising sea levels. By using moving images and video game play to induce nausea and disorientation, Lucas’ works impel the viewer to feel the physical illness of the Earth and the widespread upheavals climate change has already created.
The exhibition will be on view through February 3, 2018.