An international pioneer of robotic and artificial intelligence art, Ken Feingold exhibits this compelling installation for the first time on the East Coast since its creation with a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship whose competition portfolios are housed in Cornell Library’s Rose Goldsen Archive for New Media Art. In “The Animal, Vegetable, Mineralness of Everything,” three self-portraits, each possessing an animal, vegetable, or mineral mind, debate the nature of violence with each other, and discuss their fears – generally their fears about each other. They also wonder about “the swarm” before them, as viewers hear how they project their own interior worlds onto it in an attempt to figure out what it really is. Although they hear each other, nothing seems to penetrate or influence their ideas; no matter what the subject matter discussed, they eventually return to their own interests and fixed ideas. Generated in real time by a computer program, the dialog is not pre-recorded, and is different each time someone visits it. The conversations that these figures carry on are neither completely scripted, nor are they random; rather, the software gives each a “personality,” a vocabulary, associative habits, obsessions, and other quirks of personality which allow them to behave as if in a scene of a film, acting out their role over and over, but always changing.

Ken Feingold (US)

Ken Feingold has been exhibiting his work in video, drawing, film, sculpture, photography, and installations since 1974. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2004)[1] and a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship (2003)[2] and has taught at Princeton University and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, among others.  Having developed work in artisti residencies in Argentina and across Asia, his works in video and interactive installation have set the international benchmarks for excellence in the fields of video and new media art.  He has received fellowships and prizes rom Guggenheim, Rockefeller, National Endowment for the Arts, Japan/US Friendship Commission, Fundación Telefónica.  Having been featured at the Whitney Biennial and museums across the globe, his works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karslruhe; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; the National Gallery of Canada, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San Jose, Costa Rica; Fortuny Museum, Venice, among others. His exhibit in the 2020 Cornell Biennial celebrates his donation of his artistic archive to the Cornell Library’s Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art.