About

Vivek (b. 1986) is an interdisciplinary artist and technologist working at the intersection of film & video, sound, devised performance, digital interfaces, and new media. Trained in the information sciences and systems thinking initially, Vivek later professionally studied and pursued a career in the moving image arts. He remains an ardent student of the traditional lens-based cinematographic form pondering deeply over its capacity for transfiguration while also exploring the creative possibilities of algorithmic image synthesis, digital interfaces and 3D virtual worlds. His visual practice is interested in investigating the contrapuntal encounters of the optically acquired, digitally rendered composite moving image with digitally weaved soundscapes, unconventional spatial configurations and altered temporality. 

Working in a predominantly experimental, nonrepresentational moving image idiom that emphasizes dislodging notions of spatial continuity and visual duration in the viewer to evoke a more visceral subjective experience, Vivek's works are often explorations into recurring themes such as the creative process of the postmodern artist, the predicament of subjectivity in the digital age, technological dystopia, urban alienation and ennui. Using a variety of aural, textual and visual devices including multi channel displays, free verse cinematography, nondiegetic soundtracks, nonlinear spatial montage, web hosted textual material, and interactive mobile/computer interfaces, his praxis seeks to extend the moving image beyond the traditional temporally organized, linear, static cinematic idiom into a modern, immersive, multi-sensory, embodied new media experience that is mediated and coauthored by the viewer's subjectivity. Inspired by modern new media formulations of thinkers such as Lev Manovich and Gene Youngblood, Vivek weaves tapestries of moving images that serve as speculative intimations of a future expanded postcinema imaginary that embraces spatially reconfigured visual fields, multimedia content, realtime interactivity, augmented and virtual reality world-building, and generative AI imaging.

Vivek has been an artist-in-residence at the Toji Cultural Foundation in Wonju, South Korea. His work has been showcased around the world at venues including Glassbox Gallery in Santa Barbara, Toji Showcase in Wonju, Scary Cow Film Festival in San Francisco, Mono X Festival in New York City, Experimenta in Mumbai, among others. Born and raised in the Middle East of South Asian descent, Vivek's praxis is shaped by the uprootedness and ephemerality of his lived experiences. Having lived around the world in places including Abu Dhabi, Kochi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Houston, New York and San Francisco, he is forever home and in perpetual exile everywhere both at once. He currently resides in Santa Barbara, California.