WEBVTT

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The way that I was making art

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before I knew it was art,

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it was like making homes.

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Just trying to find home.

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Florida is already a strange place

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filled with a lot of contradictions
and strata of chaos.

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Growing up, there was a lot of intensity

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and my parents were just fully, fully overwhelmed.

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So I think it was out of this idea,

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escapism does end up being necessary.

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It's interesting because I see so much of
that in my work still today.

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The same things keep coming up.

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["Rachel Rossin's Digital Homes"]

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I started programming when I was around eight.

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I was starting to use command line

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and understand that, if I typed "print," then
I would print the thing.

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Or I was making ASCII art, which means arranging
letters in a format

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by just hitting the "enter" key a lot.

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Just playing around.

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But then when Windows 95 came out, I started
opening up EXE packages.

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So I was seeing the backend.

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I was opening video games.

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I was opening the games that came loaded,
like Solitaire.

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I was trying to figure out how to open that

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and then would have to try to repair it because
it was the family computer.

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It's just a lot of breaking things,

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which I think is the best way to learn.

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--Of course, nothing is working
now that you're here.

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--I need to calibrate it.

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My go-to tool for animation
is always motion capture

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because I want to be able to see something
living behind

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something that's typically pretty sterile.

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--This thing is fun because it's like...

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--You're also just kind of working with the
way it breaks.

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--So it's like I've rigged this man to live
inside my hand.

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--So the algorithm is trying to search for
a humanoid figure

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--using markerless motion capture.

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--And instead it has the only thing they can
latch onto as limbs:

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--my fingers.

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When I first started gaming,

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I started saving the assets, like the 3D models
that I could find.

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So I built up a library from when
I was quite young

[Rachel gaming at age 15]

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and recovered a lot of the assets from those
hard drives.

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["Skinsuits," 2019]

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The first avatar that I remember consciously
using was a generic male avatar

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and it was trying to find a neutrality in
the Internet that I was just navigating.

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That is what led to "Man Mask."

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I was just looking back and thinking about
when I was playing Call of Duty,

["Man Mask," 2019]

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I took on this male avatar
to sort of live inside.

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It was just like safety--

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you're trying to find some sort of
point of neutrality.

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There's this virtual avatar

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that I've more or less kept in the studio
just for myself.

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It's this harpy,

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which is half human, half bird.

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She, for me, represents how I feel very much
in two places at once.

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She speaks to a reality that most people feel,

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which is so much of our emotional and cognitive
space lived in virtual spaces.

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But still...

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being tethered to a "mortal coil."

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[ROSSIN]
--Have you grabbed this guy?

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[ASSISTANT]
--Yeah.

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[ROSSIN] The installation is titled,
"I'm my loving memory."

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The work is

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eight plexiglass pieces that I formed

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and an accompanying AR piece.

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First they start as paintings--

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digital paintings.

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They're sourced from 3D renderings,

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spaces that are fully virtual.

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Then they're just printed out onto the plexiglass--

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just UV printed out.

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The way that the UV works is it's embedded
inside the plexi,

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so that I can heat it enough

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and then mold it.

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They act so much as these hollow body
imprints of myself.

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I'm physically using my body to form them.

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I think of them as...

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as shields.

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["I'm my loving memory", 2020–2021]

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The way that the work is installed is

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it's important that it's shown with its shadow

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because the AR piece blends with the shadows

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that are made by the plexiglass.

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When you walk into the installation,
you see the sculptures

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and then you see this window
that's the AR piece.

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Once you ask the AR piece to start,

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there's this scene that unfolds
in front of you.

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For myself, it always comes back to
my own embodiment

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and how to anchor this very abstract,
loose space

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in the same dimension that I'm in.

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It's very sweet how, in a lot of ways,

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the work doesn't change, it just...

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looks different.

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The heart is still there in a lot of ways.

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["everyone's connected"]

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--It's okay.