The Dolls

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The Dolls (2014) re-imagines Empire (2010), but interpreted in the 2014 version in the terms of casino captalism and technological conumerism. In his composition for it, Kurt Hentschläger also remixes an earlier composition commissioned for the first Empire by Ella Joyce Buckley, layering it into a hauting new compoisition that seems to emerge from some mythological future past.

Originally commissioned by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a media ballet, The Dolls treats history as a cycle of decadence, decay and rebirth, while the 3-channel spatial projection Alices Walking transforms Carroll's Wonderland into a digital dance of eternal fading and emergence.

Hart's Alice cosmos reads like a feminist pixel wonderland. Integrating pop aesthetics and brand logos, it simultaneously reveals how patriarchal myths reshape our technology-saturated present.

Viewing a reimagined 3D computer model of a Matisse still life, through the custom web-based Digital Combines App triggered by a hand-thrown paper porcelain Website Dish, hand-thrown by potter Kimi Kim.

The Flower Matrix augmented‐reality ceramics (2016), like much of my work, are the fruit of several generative collaborations.These paper porcelain dishes were hand‐thrown by potter Kimi Kim, and the custom augmented‐reality software that I made for them use fabric motifs original created for the costumes for the opera and fashion show The Alices Walking. These sculptural “wearables” were produced and designed in collaboration with with Julie Robinson, who also performed as Alice # 4 in the piece.

Julie and Claudia Website Dresses (2013-2014), augmented trackable custom fabric, using dye sublimation computer-printed on polyester canvas, mounted on EVA foam, hand-sewn and glued, implementing web-based Alices App, triggered by QR to display text animations of the Alice’s Walking libretto; Orange and BluePrincess Dresses (2016), using 3D computer files hand-modeld by the artist using Maya animation software then rapid-prototype printed from Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene plastic; The Dolls (2016), 2-channel ten-minute loop, made using Maya 3D animation software with music by Kurt Hentschläger, mounted on Alice XR custom web-based augmented reality wallpaper, 6 paper porcelain Website Dishes, hand-thrown by potter Kimi Kim, triggering the custom web-based Digital Combines App, and documentaries of both The Alices Walking and The Dolls augmented theaters, leading into Alice XR (2018), a 3-channel immersive installation, featuring motion-captured performances by Kristina Isabelle.

Alice XR (2018), a 3-channel immersive installation, featuring motion-captured performances by Kristina Isabelle and music composed by Edmund Campion and Danielle DeGruttola.

In the 3‐channel projection in the adjoining room, an avatar performs the live motion‐captured performance of ballerina Kristina Isabelle, who danced Alice between 2013 and 2018. Her performances include the interpretive stilt dancing, also embodied by avatars in the Memory Theater series, including the Illumination shown in this exhibition. Featured in this room are Julie and my costumes, worn when we performed as Alice #4 and Alice #1, a project also created in collaboration with the composer Edmund Campion and produced during my 2014 residency at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, with the support of the Center for New Music and Audio Technology, U.C. Berkeley.