StandardVision Artist Showcase: Computational Portraiture from Media Artist Chelsi Cocking
In collaboration with Vellum LA, StandardVision has curated a site-specific artist showcase of selected works from computational media artist and MIT Media Lab researcher Chelsi Cocking’s Photorhythms series, on view across a number of StandardVision’s large-scale exterior displays throughout Los Angeles through November 30th.
Inspired by the work of Berenice Abbott, who pioneered work around the documentation of physics, as well as Harold "Doc" Edgerton, an electrical engineer and notable MIT professor who utilized the electronic stroboscope to capture motion in images, Cocking’s Photorhythms investigates whether computational methods such as facial detection, computer vision, and generative forms, can be utilized to create more expressive and artistic works of portraiture and the face.
Cocking utilized OpenFrameworks, an open-source toolkit for creative coding to build the project. The project was structured so that she could code multiple computational sketches based on facial landmark points which were detected on an image—or multiple images—in order to explore different visual ideas and results. Depending on the artist’s intention with each sketch, Cocking then created various texture-based shapes, filled and customized based on the image. The results are striking, multidimensional captures of human expression.
Chelsi Alise Cocking is a Jamaican-American computational media artist and product designer. The foundation of her practice falls within using computing and media technologies for craft in art and design, particularly within the visual arts, interactive arts, and performance. More singularly, her work also explores the inherent possibilities of understanding the human body, motion, and movement through computing and utilizing that understanding to create updated and novel experiences in computational and interactive arts. As a native Jamaican and Black woman in design, science, technology, and engineering, Chelsi has begrudgingly become used to being the only one like herself in the room. This dynamic is something she wants to change. Her practice is equally and more importantly about working to establish increased access and opportunity for underrepresented minorities, women, and those from marginalized backgrounds within the fields of design. Chelsi is currently a researcher and graduate student at the MIT Media Lab in the Future Sketches group under Zach Lieberman, where she is studying for her Masters of Science in Media, Arts, and Sciences.
Catch images from Cocking’s Photorhythms series on view at Melrose & Spaulding, Kurve LA, 3rd Street Crossing, and 888 N Vermont, through November 30th, and learn more about Chelsi Cocking on her website.
