artists
surges
about
Carrie Allison
Lou Sheppard
Ruth Marsh
Amanda Dawn Christie
Jordan Bennett
Jennifer Willet
Séamus Gallagher
Coming soon

Buffalo Rising is an Augmented Reality piece that imagines the buffalo returning to all landscapes; prairies, urban, rural, and seascapes. In the late 1800s the buffalo were slaughtered in both the United States and Canada as a way to starve Indigenous Nations into submission, or straight up genocide. Buffalo Rising features seven beaded, felted, and tufted buffalos that roam your immediate landscape through your screen.

Learn more about Carrie Allison

This artwork can only be accessed on a mobile device with the Instagram app. When you click the link below on your phone, it will open the Instagram app, and you must click “Continue” to accept the Terms & Conditions. The filter may open on a front camera, you will need to click the bottom right icon of two arrows forming a circle, to switch to the back camera. Once you flip the camera you will tap the screen to activate the filter. On your phone you’ll see the seven buffalos will roam around your surroundings, whether it be your living room, a busy street corner, or a seascape. Once you find a place for the seven buffalos, click the circular button to take a photo, or hold it down to record a video. You can record the video for up to 60 seconds at a time. Before you post, you’re welcome to tag us by clicking the screen and typing “@iotainstitute.” You can share the photo or video with your followers by clicking ‘Your Story’ or ‘Close Friends’ you can also save the video to your device by clicking the three dots on the top right, then click save. You aren’t able to control the movement or the size of the buffalo. The buffalo are 3D renderings based on 2D beadings by artist Carrie Allison, which travel in a slow circular pattern. They are shiny beads in shades of brown on brown felt, with white beaded hooves and tufted hair behind their ears.

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Launching Feb 14, 2023

Lonely Hearts Call is an interactive phone application that allows you to experience a morse code message as light flashes and vibrations. As queer people language that describes our identities and our bodies can be liberating - a moment of recognition, or violent - an erasure of our identity. Lonely Hearts Call shows how language can betray us - we are exposed by the flashing light, our bodies shaken by the vibrations of the morse code message. But language can also make us - the light revealing our bodies on a dance floor, the bass of a dance track aligning or breathing and heart beats. Amid rising violence towards queer people and the loss of queer spaces from our communities Lonely Hearts Call is both a lament and a call to connect.

Learn more about Lou Sheppard‍

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Launching March 8, 2023

Entangle your tender mushroom hyphae with the soul of the universe and enter the Mycelial Dimension.

Learn more about Ruth Marsh

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Launching March 28, 2023

DX Drone Machine
This contemplative interactive musical web instrument is built upon a library of contact microphone recordings from the RCI (Radio Canada International) radio towers, that can be played in real time by multiple people from around the globe. Just as EM waves are not constrained by the boundaries of nation states, this project invites people from various parts of the globe to play together across borders, conjuring the ghosts of radio towers and contemplating the molecular memory of that metal.

Learn more about Amanda Dawn Christie

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Launching April 18, 2023

Remembering Her Voice
In this augmented reality piece Jordan invites you to come sit at his grandmother’s table. For him this was a place to learn, reflect and grow. He learned so many stories while visiting his Nan over games of radio bingo, cups of tea, moose pie, tea buns and even rolling cigarettes. This piece brings one of Jordan’s circular paintings to life and provides a deeper look into the usual 2D pieces he is known for.

Learn more about Jordan Bennett

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Launching May 9, 2023

Learn more about Jennifer Willet‍

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Launching May 30, 2023

WHOLE NEW WORLD/FOR SOPHIE is dedicated to the late artist SOPHIE. It is about finding and creating new worlds, as well as a rumination on collective mourning.

Learn more about Séamus Gallagher‍

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Surges is an online ecosystem of seven virtual environments presented by IOTA Institute in partnership with VUCAVU. This project invites artists to design online exhibition spaces with technical support, to create experiences for audiences beyond linear visual aesthetics. Artworks explore vibrational haptics, interactive instruments, 360 video, and augmented reality to create multisensory online experiences and encounters.

These solo exhibitions explore the potential of virtual arts spaces for the presentation of artworks that are in progress, in beta, in the midst of perpetual creation. Unveiled in seven sequential launches throughout 2023, each surge is an artist-led designed space by: Carrie Allison, Lou Sheppard, Ruth Marsh, Amanda Dawn Christie, Jordan Bennett, Jennifer Willet, and Séamus Gallagher.

Surges is presented by IOTA Institute in partnership with VUCAVU, with the financial support of Arts Nova Scotia and Canada Council for the Arts.

Curatorial support: Mireille Bourgeois & Amanda Shore
Graphic Design: Sébastien Aubin
Web Design: Joni Schinkel
Accessibility Design: Kristina McMullin
Developer: Seva Ivanov