Carol-Ann Braun

Paris, France

 

Carol-Ann shuffles shapes around, endlessly. She’s cut up and recombined most of her work; fragments of it can be found stuffed in garbage bags, taped and tacked and torn in collages, and of course stored in large portfolios. Not surprisingly, she channels several apps, with scores of v01, v02a, v02b, v02cbetter, v02dFINAL, v02eFINALFINAL… returning to old versions years later for things to re-work and improve, animate or render interactive... All this has been perfectly suited to her temperament and ambitions.   

  

Collaborations with programmers have also been a source of great satisfaction, a key to renewing the avant-garde she discovered in the seventies at Princeton. Systems, Fluxus scores and site-specific art – explored during Jeremy Gilbert Rolfe’s seminars in the Visual Arts Program – definitely helped when it came to media convergence, 

combinatoire  and networked conversations. 

 

Today, she continues to explore “Living Art”, a concept forged by friend Florent Aziosmanoff: The term, inspired by The Media Lab’s “Living things”, involves imagining a space that moves and then builds (with code, programs, a plan of action J…) an ongoing, evolving relationship with the spectator(s). 

  

Prototypes developed with students led to neighborhood projects, grant applications and more team-work. The ongoing project that distracts her from art is the brainchild of Le Conseil Citoyen Paris13 (a group of militant citizens in the thirteenth arrondissement. It is entitled “La Station C”, a reference to Europe’s largest start up hub (called “La Station F”) just down the street. “La Station C” will be launched…in about a year. It includes “Ideas Boxes” provided by Libraries Without Borders, tents, sound systems, experimental interactive sculptures. It also features a “Street Media Totem” which Carol-Ann worked on for several years, thanks to the help of scores of kids, retirees, teachers, students, neighbors, fellow artists and sturdy programmers…  

See https://concerturbain.wordpress.com/le-street-media-totem/  

 

One regret: how difficult it is to re-cycle prototypes when technology becomes obsolescent, so quickly, and when engineering is more than ever the right career track... 

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In highly collaborative work with Alain LONGUET (programming with Processing), Carol-Ann (data base and structure), creates "Generative Works" (see the "By Twice" pieces in the gallery).

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Two parallel 27 ‘’ screens, placed side by side, reveal the constants and the random variations in this programmed work. Every minute, a fragment is selected from a suite of 60 graphic elements; other graphic elements, selected from a base of 150 elements, are randomly superimposed, with varying degrees of transparency.  This selection of screen captures is a sampling of a nearly infinite number of potential variations.   

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