Artist Interview: Cari Ann Shim Sham*

Cari Ann Shim Sham* is a visual artist whose art explores the power of asking questions, and the possibilities of improvisation and experimentation to liberate dance. The artist is currently investigating AI choreography, generative dance, blockchain GIF archival of performance, and ways of using blockchain in lieu of social media.

She is co-founder and curator for the Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art and is a full Arts Professor of Dance & Technology at NYU, TISCH Dance Department. Her work has been showcased at notable venues such as Cannes and United Nations General Assembly among others.

We asked Cari Ann about her art, creative process, and inspirations.

The carnivorous demon of doubt, 2020. “A green tara goddess meditation on the carniviorous demons of doubt. Fear of of flesh-eating demons, suffering through doubt. The sixth of the eight great fears. Minted on the Ethereum blockchain.”

Can you tell us about your background as a digital artist? How did you get started in this field?

I grew up with an eye for composition, framing, and movement developed by watching my father photograph race cars at Watkins Glen followed by family slideshows on the pull down screen. Music always blasted in our house which instilled a deep appreciation for rhythm and melody and my mom jitterbugging in the kitchen got my body moving early on. In the 90s I had a dance company in Los Angeles, and we collaborated a lot with other artists, including digital designers, video artists and filmmakers. In our collaborations I would watch closely what they were doing and ask questions. Learning from them I began my own deep dive into the digital realm, with my keen eye, my sharp sense of timing and musicality and choreographic knowledge of how to move things.

*~tilde~* *2024. “Using a still output from the ~tilde~ generative AI project on* *Emergent Properties* *that uses p5.js to explore 3-D grids, patterns, & creatures, I used a still image to video AI to animate this GIF.”*

It all fell into place quite quickly and i made my first short dance film within a year. Soon I was creating video art and later moved into creative coding, interactive media, VR, AR, XR, and world building.

Currently I am a generative artist investigating blockchain GIF archival of the body and performance in Web3, and building a participatory development and community onboarding project for an open source AI choreographer biased towards inclusive and accessible movement.

*Flying, 2022. “This is a gif made from photos taken by Cari Ann Shim Sham* of the generative dance "gorgeous creatures" and minted onto the Tezos blockchain to archive the performance”*

What inspires your art? Are there any particular themes or subjects that you enjoy exploring through your artwork?

My practice explores the morphic field, bodily circular movement's relationship to magic, human interactions with technology, performative inflatable sculpture as empathy generators, self portraiture as critique, the power of asking questions and the possibilities of improvisation and experimentation to liberate dance. I often work in the nude.

It is the flow of creative energy that I nurture rather than staying inside of specific styles or genres. Thus my artwork goes in all directions. It is wild. The work starts and ends with my body as a conduit which invokes beauty, conjures rapture, creates motion and relies upon an inner depth of resilience and honesty. My work stems from internal stimuli such as visions, dreams, and gazing, and from external stimuli such as human needs, planetary needs, and universal needs that I respond to through work that critiques or has a conversation around the stimulus.

Above all things, I am a poet. And it is the rhythm, the motion, the dance of life that is the inherent through line to all of my work.

*body landscapes, generative art project, 2023*

Can you tell us about Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art?

Joey Zaza and I co-founded the museum in 2020 as a means to create an online digital art museum that pays its artists. We were in lockdown and everything in the art world was being canceled and postponed. so we decided to build mowna and host a biennial. We exhibited the work of 87 artists from 44 countries. We sold tickets and paid our artists 70% of the sales to help the artists survive and to create an accessible platform for people to enjoy art in their homes through their computers and the internet.

To date we are on our eleventh exhibition, expanding monwa to include blockchain and token art, dropped ticket sales and made entry to our exhibitions free along with all of our calls for submission and shifted to paying our artists through selling their artwork.

*Rabbit panther birds highway sign excerpt, full GIF available on objkt.com*

We have a partnership with Loop Art Critique, the mowna room, an XR space for exhibiting art, which we use for our shows and as a way to host talks, meet ups and parties. We are now 427 artists strong from 66 countries and ever growing.

*window 2023, generative art project on fx(hash), output #1*

Our next show is mowna X TS Wild & Newfangled Techspressionism a collaborative online art exhibition and NFT drop between the Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (mowna) and the Techspressionism (TS) community. This curated show aims to serve mowna's mission to support, empower, and enable artists by exhibiting and paying them, and to introduce Techspressionism to a wider audience.

Partnering with the Loop Art Critique/Mud Foundation, this online exhibition will occur at mowna.org and in the metaverse in the mowna Loop Room, with an exhibition launch party at the Techspressionism Salon on Oct 3, 2024.

Twirl girl, 2024. “A glb created from a self portrait of cari ann shim sham* dancing in a field in new hampshire in the summer of '23, background of the the photo was removed and was then run through emprops stable diffusion model to animate and turned into a glb with Huggingface. this is an ongoing exploration by cari ann shim sham* of how to bring dance, the body, and performance to the tezos blockchain. minted for the objkt4objkt event.”

You’re also an instructor of creative video, interactive design, and immersive arts – how has your experience teaching at universities influenced your own art practice?

I love to teach and I love to learn. My students are my teachers and technology requires me to be a forever student. My classroom is a lab for experimentation, risk taking, vulnerability and big ideas. the things my students come up with always amazes us and brings us joy. We are in it together and we broaden each others’ artistic practice through our circling and sharing of space, time, and attention to each others’ craft. Teaching is a gift that I serve with great reverence and gratitude.

What is a fun fact about you?

I’m a wild edible mushroom hunter and a free diver who practices interspecies collaboration via underwater dancing with wild spotted dolphins.

What advice would you give to aspiring digital artists who are just starting out?

Have fun. Love what you are doing. Enjoy your life. Make what you want to make. Don’t get caught in the loop of making what you think you should make and certainly don’t believe everything you think.

Oh, and one last thing. I give you permission to delete your social media. You will be much happier, productive, and artistically authentic without it.