Shelly Farnham

Statement

Artist Statement

My career as an artist is strongly interwoven with both my career as a technologist and my passion for community organizing.  I have a B.A. majoring in Fine Arts with a concentration in Oil Painting, and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology.  While working on innovation teams as a technologist in the past ten years, my artwork has evolved into large scale, collaborative installations, many of which incorporate interactive technology and social media.  As a community organizer I have orchestrated many fundraising events (usually involving elaborate collaborative decorations) and organized large scale art projects, and in the past several years I have served on the board or organizing committee of several not-for-profit arts organizations. 

Much of my current artwork reflects my fascination with the transforming nature of technology, as we move into a future of increasingly technology-mediated social dynamics.  Technology is the new magic, and has fundamentally changed how we relate to each other and the world.  My next several projects explore the role of technology in generating emergent social entities that are in aggregate separate from who we are as individuals.

(Please visit my Curriculum Vitae to learn about my career as a researcher in social media.)

Extended Biography

Blue Audrey

I am a classically trained visual artist with a parallel career in technology.  In high school my family sent me to a small, private high school to foster my creative side – Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences – where I thrived under the four years of required arts classes (1984-1987).  At Georgetown University (1987-1991) I double majored in Fine Arts and Psychology.  Georgetown has a very traditional arts program, so I was not exposed to any of the more “modern” art mediums such as acrylics or computer graphics.  At Georgetown I focused primarily on figurative and portrait oil paintings. 

When I finished college I decided to pursue a career in psychology.  However while I spent a year in Rhode Island as a direct care counselor, I took night classes at the Rhode Island School of Design (1992), again in painting.  I went to graduate school at the University of Washington to get a Ph.D. in Social Psychology (1993-1999).  While at graduate school I continued to paint, and took sculpting classes through the UW extension program and at Pratt.

From 1999 to 2005, while working full time at Microsoft Research studying social technologies, much of my artistic interests were expressed through Burning Maninstallations.  I was particularly attracted by the emphasis in the Burning Man community on the notion of immersive, experiential art:  art that provided a transformative experience for participants, often through an almost ritualistic process.  My first project was a Princess Cage with Dave Vronay and Weiru Cai: we created a structure that would symbolize the tension between the pursuit of material luxury, and the restrictions pursuing material goods imposes on your freedom. 

In 2003 I became involved with theSpace Virgin Arts Collective as a creative lead, having discovered I have a strong organizational skill for directing the construction of large scale art projects. In 2005 we formalized the group into a 501c3 non-profit arts organization to foster large scale art collaborations locally — the SV Arts Collective — for which I was the Vice President and continue to serve as a  member of the board.  I have since played the role of creative director or event organizer for many arts fundraising events, usually involving organizing and installing elaborate decorations and large scale, immersive, collaborative art projects.    I also served on the board of Ignition Northwest, another arts group focusing on facilitating large scale, experiental arts in the Pacific Northwest./p>

It is only in the past couple of years (while continuing my technology career at Waggle Labs) that I have also become preoccupied with incorporating art into technology, and technology into art.  I increasingly see that a lot of the more cutting edge uses of social technologies are occurring in the hands of artists, and  I have been pushing my technology projects in a more artistic direction.  I began attending the Dorkbot meetings a few years ago and in 2005 I took on a lead role with the Dorkbot organizing committee (a.k.a. “Dorkbot Overlord”).  In the future, I expect that as my imagination increasingly incorporates new media as another tool in my creative arsenal, I will exploit new, experimental media in implementing art projects.