CLARKE, RACHEL

Statement
Information saturation is usually the starting point for my work; my process involves fragmenting and reconstituting the digital and analog information that surrounds and immerses me. I reconstruct it, creating contemplative works full of invented objects, spaces and topographies.

I create art using industry standard software such as Maya, After Effects and Photoshop, as well as open-source software, and mobile applications. The technological innovations that make my practice possible were developed to meet other needs, such as to create military simulations, or to provide media tools for the entertainment industry.

Living in the post-digital era, I believe that using digital materials and tools is the way to examine the contemporary moment. Almost everything we experience passes through digital channels and becomes data. While I’m using the technologies developed for 21st century capitalism, the way I’m using them becomes a critique of the corporate model of technology—a model designed for consumption of media. Instead the technologies are used to question, to assert creative agency, and to reimagine the virtual and physical world around me.

Biography
Rachel Clarke (born UK) is an artist, writer, curator and educator living in Sacramento, CA. She is Professor of New Media in the Art Department at Cal State, Sacramento. Clarke is the founding editor of Media-N the CAA New Media Caucus’s international journal. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Media-N from 2005 – 2011, and is currently serving on the Editorial Board.

Solo/two person exhibitions include: Unmapping at the University of Georgia in fall 2013; Awakenings at CSU Stanislaus University Art Gallery, CA in 2010; and Between at Reynolds Gallery, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA in 2009. Recent group exhibitions include AR2 View for V1B3, launched at CAA NYC in Feb 2013; Currents International Festival of New Media, Santa Fe, NM in June 2012; Ostranenie at Aggregate Space, Oakland, CA in 2012; and Really-Fake at William Paterson University, NJ in 2011.

Commissions include Crocker Mosaic, a new media participatory artwork created in collaboration with composer Stephen Blumberg for the opening of Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum extension in October 2010. In 2011 she co-curated an exhibition of experimental 3D filmmaking with artist Claudia Hart of the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, entitled The Real-Fake: Simulation Technology after Photography. The show toured in the US in 2012. Working in collaboration with Sacramento Metropolitan Art Commission she is artist/curator for an NEA funded augmented reality public art project, Broadway Augmented to be located in the Broadway Corridor in Sacramento, launching in fall 2014. 

Rachel Clarke joined Arnauts in 2014.