Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll took the audience behind the scenes of their video game essay Blindspot. The artist duo will presented their investigation of the absent Baptistery in Assassin's Creed II’s Florence, reflecting on what prevented the birthplace of linear perspective from being rendered in 3D.
Through game images, online maps and image search engines, the walk-through drew the connection between the site’s importance in the development of Western scientific technology and the gradual restructuring of political power through such technological representation that continues to this day.
Biography
Digital artists Cat Bluemke (b. 1993, Waterloo, ON) and Jonathan Carroll (b. 1990, Port Hawkesbury NS) specialise in game design, expanded reality, and performance. United under their collective persona as SpekWork Studio, they make experiences that span the digital spectrum, from interactive games and comics to immersive reality experiences and live performances. These projects probe technology’s ability to obscure the lines between work and play. They explore technology’s duality as both a labour-saving device and tool of exploitation. Their works often engage with the struggles of precarious and feminised workers, the demographic that often finds itself at the crossroads of technological advances and pitfalls. They draw inspiration from their lives as precarious digital freelancers while learning from their communities and the oppressive systems they seek to unravel. Recently they’re focusing on the ways work imprints upon our bodies and health by drawing on personal histories.
With ten years of exhibition history, they’ve shown internationally with prominent institutions like Rhizome and the New Museum (2020) and the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) as part of the American Pavillion’s corollary exhibits. Recently, they’ve exhibited with the Singapore Art Museum (2023), Art Gallery of Regina (2023), the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (2022), InterAcess (2021), and Eyelevel Gallery (2021). With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Rhizome, and multiple provincial arts councils, the pair has self-published much of their interactive work online, making them freely available to a global audience.
Screen Walks is a new series of live-streamed artist/researcher-led explorations of online spaces and artistic strategies designed to illuminate a thriving – often overlooked – digital cultural scene. A new online collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, UK and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.
