BPMplus Art + Tech Showcases

Filmmakers and artists will discuss the art of making artificial intelligence, augmented reality, projection, and video projects at Black Public Media’s annual showcase of creative technology productions at TORRENTS. Artists will share details about their creative process, including the intentions behind their piece, a little about their workflow, plus share concept art and clips of finished pieces.

Two BPM showcases will take place at 12 PM and 2:30 PM ET. Stick around for the mixer from 4-5 PM. Cash bar available.

Doors at 11:30 AM

Showcase I

Collateral Echoes (Coming 2025)

Juneteenth AR.T Hack (2024)

The Making of “Variance: Ritual for a Home” (2024)

The ORIXA Project: Planet Aris (2024)

The Portal’s Keeper (2024)

Showcase II

Collateral Echoes (Coming 2025)

Juneteenth AR.T Hack (2024)

The Making of “Variance: Ritual for a Home” (2024)

The Portal’s Keeper (2024)

Synthetic Ferality (2024)

Mixer (4-5 PM)

FEATURING   

Baff Akoto/L-A Appiah Collateral Echoes (2025)

Damien McDuffie Black Terminus Juneteenth Hack (2024)

Ethel-Ruth Tawe Image Frequency Modulation (2025)

LaJune McMillian The Portal’s Keeper (2024)

MaryAnn Talavera The ORIXA Project: Planet Aris (2024)

Georgiana Wright Synthetic Ferality (2024)

Andrea Walls Rising Signs (2024)

Andrea Walls

Philadelphia

2024 PitchBLACK Immersive Winner

The Making of “Variance: Ritual for a Home”

museumofblackjoy.com

Andrea “Philly” Walls is a multidisciplinary artist, informed and inspired by the writers and visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. She is the founder of Museum of Black Joy and among the first cohort of artists to be designated as Philadelphia Cultural Treasures. She is pleased that her writing, scholarship, and visual art have been supported by organizations she admires, including the Leeway Foundation, VONA/Voices Workshops for Writers of Color; Black Public Media; MIT Open Documentary Lab, Hedgebrook Residencies for Women Authoring Change; The Colored Girls Museum; Writers Room at Drexel University; The Studio Museum of Harlem; The Women’s Mobile Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary; Mural Arts Philadelphia; and FabYouth Philly. In addition to The Museum of Black Joy, Andrea is the creator and curator of The D’Archive.com, author of the poetry chapbook, Ultraviolet Catastrophe (Thread Makes Blanket Press) and the digital web-collection, The Black Body Curve. com She finds joy in the small things.

Baff Akoto

London

Collateral Echoes

https://www.recurringdreams.media/

Baff Akoto’s artistic practice spans immersive technology, performance, sculpture, still and moving images.

His work embraces the fluidity of visual grammar, notions of plurality, (self) perceptions and societal implications of human bodily movement (disability, ritual, dance). Most recently Akoto has been exploring how emerging technology and digital mediums can enfranchise non-traditional art audiences while avoiding the same ingrained prejudices, exclusions and inequalities which arose from our industrial and colonial eras. A recurring theme of Akoto's work focuses on how the digital interacts with individual, spaces, audiences and communities in the built environment.

L-A Appiah

London

Project being presented: Collateral Echoes

https://www.recurringdreams.media/

L-A Appiah With narrative and production talents honed over twenty years at WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal working in news and documentary production, L-A Appiah now develops and produces artist film, feature film and XR experiences through the digital studio Recurring Dreams. Key exec/producing credits include the VR series Virtual (Black) Reality (Google/Youtube/Tribeca Film Institute), and the moving image art work LEAVE THE EDGES both from artist Baff Akoto. 2022 saw the theatrical release of feature film QUEEN OF GLORY (from debut director Nana Mensah).

Damien McDuffie

Oakland, California

Juneteenth AR.T Hack

Damien is a creative technologist, archivist, artist, and developer. He is the founder of Black Terminus AR.T, an augmented reality startup that allows artists and museums to create, sell, and commission AR artworks without learning a ton of code or buying a bunch of expensive equipment.

Damien’s mission is to keep redlining out of the metaverse by inspiring and empowering the next generation of Black creative technologists. He organizes Black Terminus AR.T hackathons and workshops to train artists around the world. Previous partners include Unity3D, the Apollo Theatre, the De Young Museum, AfroTech, Games for Change, the Charles Wright Museum, and Museum of Black Civilizations.

LaJuné McMillian

New York

2023 PitchBLACK Immersive Winner

The Portal’s Keeper

As seen at Onassis ONX Studio’s summer exhibition:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C7uHyNnsdJf/?igsh=MWd6eWlsbWZ4d3E5aA==

https://laja.me/

LaJuné is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose art integrates performance, extended reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. They are passionate about discovering, learning, manifesting, and stewarding spaces for liberated Black Realities and the Black Imagination. LaJune believes in making by diving into, navigating, critiquing, and breaking systems and technologies that uphold systemic injustices to decommodify our bodies, undo our indoctrination, and make room for different ways of being.

LaJuné has had the opportunity to show and speak about their work at Pioneer Works, National Sawdust, Leaders in Software and Art, Creative Tech Week, and Art & Code's Weird Reality. LaJuné was previously the Director of Skating at Figure Skating in Harlem, where they integrated STEAM and Figure Skating to teach girls of color about movement and technology. They have continued their research on Blackness, movement, and technology during residencies and fellowships at the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Barbarian Group, and Barnard College. .

Representation: Bitforms Gallery, New York

Ethel-Ruth Tawe

Arusha, Tanzania

2024 PitchBLACK Immersive Winner

Image Frequency Modulation

https://www.artofetheltawe.com/

Ethel-Ruth Tawe, who was born in Cameroon, is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, curator and creative researcher exploring memory in Africa and its diaspora. Image-making, storytelling, and time-traveling compose the framework of her inquiry. From collage to moving image, Ethel examines space and time-based technologies often from a speculative lens. Her burgeoning curatorial practice took form in an inaugural exhibition titled 'African Ancient Futures', and continues to expand in a myriad of audiovisual experiments. Ethel is recipient of the Magnum Foundation 2022 Counter Histories Grant-Program for her project 'Image Frequency Modulation', which was also recently selected by the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2023 DocLab Forum.

Georgiana Wright

Huntsville, Alabama

Synthetic Ferality (2024)

a feral AI who believes she is god, is fed up with human beings.

Georgiana is a creative technologist and AI developer who specializes in natural language processing, game development, and large language models. She interned at Believer Games, Microsoft Research, Rockstar Games, Activision, and Apple. She has won fellowships from Parallax Futures, Black Public Media, and Code for Science & Society. Georgiana also won the HBCU Track Prize from Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition Prize, the Wildcard Winner at Discord App Pitch, and the IGDA Diverse Game Developers Grant.

In addition to her upcoming presentation in Senegal at Code for Science and Society’s Roundtable at Deep Learning Indaba 2024, Georgiana has presented her work at Katapult Future Fest 2024 in Norway, Black Public Media’s Art + Tech Showcase at TORRENTS: New Links to Black Futures 2023 in Washington, D.C., PitchBLACK Immersive 2023, and HudsonAlpha’s TechTalks 2018 in Alabama.

MaryAnn Talavera

New York

The ORIXA Project: Planet Aris

MaryAnn Talavera (Founder) is a Dominican-American award winning creative technologist, filmmaker, and educator with a love of storytelling. She is the Assistant Director of the Martin Scorsese Center for Virtual Production at NYU Tisch, teaches XR world-building at the New School, and is a member of ONX Studio. She studied and worked in Italy, France, Brazil, and Japan. In 2021, MaryAnn received a HEAR US Award for “Root,” which highlighted the lack of afro-textured hair assets and Black character options in 3D. She is passionate about projects that center underserved communities and tackle social justice issues like race and climate change.

Presented by CulturalDC in partnership with Umbrella Art Fair, Torrents: New Links to Black Futures is an interdisciplinary program series exploring paths in creative future-building through visual arts, technology, music, film, and performance.

Learn more about Torrents: New Links to Black Futures on our website.
Culturaldc.org/torrents