High Tech, Hairy Creations

“Anything you can think of in your mind, you can create, even if it doesn’t exist in reality.” That, says junior Bobby Emrick, is the coolest thing about his new media major at UNC Asheville. And some fantastic creations, including a revenge-seeking claymation alien, a disc with millions of undulating hairs, robot bodies with deep emotion etched into their faces, and real humans with no faces, will all be unveiled when the annual New Media Juried Exhibition opens with a reception from 4:30-6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 6 in the Zeis Hall Second Floor Lobby.

Emrick, who hopes to create virtual reality holograms for music festivals after graduation – “to bring creations off the flat screen and onto the

world you’re in” – is an Air Force veteran from Franklin, N.C. who has always been into technology. “Every day, I try to learn a new tool,” he says, and his creation that was chosen for this exhibit, a disc of sorts, was crafted using Cinema 4D software to display two million hairs with movement. Emrick’s other work chosen for the show is some very real looking but entirely digitally generated smoke.

Other works chosen for this juried show focus less on elaborate image realism, and instead on emotion and different ways of conveying it. Kat Jung, a junior from Durham majoring in new media, started with some robotic-looking creatures, and through animation, brought them to life with vivid facial expressions. “I can raise an eyebrow slightly or give the mouth a little smile,” she said. “Some people like to be onstage and act, but to me, it’s more interesting to make a character act – a character you can’t see anywhere else.”

Patrick McGrady took the opposite approach with his two portraits that were chosen for the show. These images began as conventional candid photos of his friends, but were transformed when McGrady removed his friends’ essential facial features. “I want people to question why and imagine any kind of facial features they want,” he says. A native of Krems, Austria, McGrady has added a drama minor to his new media major, and hopes to go into a career in video production.

Alison Antaramian, a senior, also is hoping for a career in video production. One of her works chosen for the show is a stop-motion video starring a clayed-over Halloween mask cast as a scientist in this mini drama, and a similarly clayed toy alien ready to get revenge after enduring too many experiments at the hands of that scientist. “I don’t like it when things look too nice – there’s a loss of personality,” she said. “I like the idea of combining analog and digital, to blend the two things together. I like the aesthetic combination that comes of that.” Antaramian is open to finding work in Asheville doing creative commercial work or film work.

Connecting the business and creative sectors is also in the minds of those curating the exhibition – Suzy O’hara, a curator, and researcher based in Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K.

“Dr. O’Hara’s curatorial work between business and the arts in the North East U.K. could serve as useful and timely inspiration for the arts sector here in Asheville,” said Victoria Bradbury, UNC Asheville assistant professor of new media. “Her fostering of artists working in maker spaces and between business and the arts is a model that reflects exciting things that are happening here at Revolve Gallery, STEAM studios, CCCD, The Media Arts Project and beyond.”

O’Hara, founder and curator of Thinking Digital Arts, will give a juror lecture, Fused Creative Innovation, at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, April 6, in Zeis Hall, Room 202 as part of UNC Asheville’s Arts Fest. The juror talk, opening reception, and exhibition are all free and open to everyone. The exhibition remains on view through April 16.

2018-04-02