CHARI presents their new interdisciplinary work, MUTATE, an archival themed, installation based, media performance work. With the growing trend of technological advancement underlining and underwriting the world, a world where big data trains the algorithms that train us, MUTATE embraces culturally informed small data, employing creative methods for preserving histories, and asking questions about what of ourselves might we encode into the future. Reimagining the Georgetown Steam plant as an enlarged bodily interior, MUTATE uses digital sound, digital visual media, 3D animation and algorithmic architectures to transform the Steam plant into a systemic embodied archive. In a solo performance, CHARI meticulously ensures that the archive is running and that the systems are working, before downloading themselves into a new archival form.
This work is partial fulfillment of CHARI's PhD dissertation. The event is sponsored by Georgetown Steam plant and the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media at the University of Washington.