Biography //
b. Lima, Ohio (1987)
Photo by Kyle LaMere
Brittany Ransom is an artist and educator who creates interactive installations, electronic art objects, and site specific interventions that strive to probe the line between human, animal, and environmental relations while exploring emergent technologies. Using technology as a material, Ransom’s work introduces concepts exploring the conflicted relationships between our culture, the concern for nature, and the way we interact with the natural world. She explores the paradoxical bond between human, nature, its inhabitants and the co-evolution between the living and budding technological innovation while questioning these technologies. Ransom’s work invites the viewer to question how technology can concurrently invent, destroy, enshroud, and expose itself within our shared environments.
Ransom received her Master of Fine Arts Degree with a focus in New Media Arts (formerly known as Electronic Visualization) from the University of Illinois at Chicago in May of 2011. She is a College Art Association Fellow (2011), two time recipient of the Lincoln Fellowship (2010 & 2011), the Provost Award recipient at UIC (2011), and has won numerous awards throughout her emergent career. Prior to her time in Chicago, Ransom lived and worked in Columbus, Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with distinction in Art and Technology from The Ohio State University in 2008. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and has been featured in several publications. Ransom will be an Assistant of Art at Southern Methodist University working closely with the Center for Creative Computation beginning in the Fall of 2012.
Artist Statement //
As a new media artist I strive to probe the lines between human, animal, and environmental relations. We exist in a culture that is in the midst of a technological revolution. With our society’s existing dependence on emergent technologies comes a conflicted relationship between our culture and the concern for nature. This paradoxical bond between human and nature poses and solicits the need for a joint co-evolution between the living and budding technological innovation.
My artwork began through the observation of these often strained relationships and came to fruition through the proposition of potential remedies to our constant struggle with co-evolution. I introduce these remedies in the form of interactive sculpture, possible prosthetics, wearable recording devices, and digital manipulations. My artwork invites technology, real and imagined, to heighten our awareness of the existence and perspectives of the world from other species point of view. It questions and investigates the constant personification and attribution of human characteristics, lifestyles, and views on animals, insects, and ultimately nature. Though I find the development of evolving technology to be alluring, many of my pieces comment on our dulled awareness of environmental concerns that our techno-advancements can trigger.
By creating interactive art that relies on the direct contact between animal, insect, and technology, I hope to bring to light and intensify our sensitivity to the lives of other species. My work invites the viewer to experience a visual and auditory realm controlled by other species to create a conversation that explores the relationship between our progressive society and our understanding of the natural world.
As my work continues to develop and transition from imagined digitized environments to new media sculpture, my fascination and passion invested in the perspective and awareness of “the other” continues to be unwavering. I see my work progressing into a lifelong commitment to investigating interspecies relationships and environmental concerns. Ultimately I hope to always invite the viewer to question how technology can concurrently invent, destroy, enshroud and expose itself within our shared environment.