Jennifer Long

Media Arts & Sciences major

As a multidisciplinary designer and visual communicator specializing in immersive narratives, my work magnifies the unfamiliar details of familiar life into experiential pieces. I entangle my artistic practice with Chinese diaspora, memory, and technological ethics. I unravel these topics through virtual reality, creative computing, woodwork, and (a copious amount of) yarn. By de-centering the human factor within these experiences, I hope to facilitate multi-sensory conversations which defamiliarize the mundanity into fresh, raw sensations.

At my practice's core are interactive conversations reliant upon human-to-human interaction, dialogue, and collaboration. Reflective of my studio's constant state of disorder, I sow a field of mediums and inspirations in search for new modes of communication. TL;DR my work exists for you and the person next to you.

Ecdysis

archival inkjet prints, digital game, mixed media installation

Jewett Black Box

illustration of ribs, spine, pelvis with blue, purple, and red organs, surrounded by illustrated plant forms; red to blue gradient background

My project, Ecdysis, explores the following question: how do we approach women who speak, think, and behave as human, but are explicitly labeled non-human? Be it robots, cyborgs, or chimeras, popular media has long been populated with representations of non-human, human-made fantasies. My project, titled after the reptile skin-shedding process, investigates the relationship between cultural imagination of yet-to-be technology and their real-life counterpart - more specifically, how portrayal of and treatment towards women in video games (as cyborg, AI, and human) may explain our actual perspective and usage of artificial intelligence. My work involves a dating simulation situated within a larger installation space, defined by graphic adverts which narratively and formally subverts its genre expectations, and guided by a formal analysis of how cultural perspectives engender sexualized fictional female robots, gratuitously impractical within their narrative context.

computer in a very dark room showing pink/red/pattern gradient and word 'Ecdysis' in script on its screen; above and just behind the screen hang a series of digitally drawing anime-style posters

computer screen in a very dark room; screen shows a red to pink gradient, white outline drawings of anime-style women's profiles along the bottom, script text 'Ecdysis', buttons for 'New Game' and 'Continue'

computer screen in a very dark room showing pink to blue gradient background with glowing white stars and an orthographic rendering of a classroom with two simple characters facing each other

<< previous artist | back to within reach | next artist >>