Kira DeCoudres - Visuals FF#17
Kira deCoudres is a US based remix media artist and theorist specializing in topics of body-mind decay, mutation, and mutilation. DeCoudres graduated from Hampshire College as a Five College Digital Humanities Fellow studying Science, Technology, and Media Studies. She has presented theoretical work at SLSA, EVA London and exhibited media work at ISEA and the Global Community Bio Summit at MIT. She has been an artist-in-residence at Cultivamos Cultura, worked at Wave Farm Radio, and performed at Rosekill Performance Art Space. We’re extremely excited to have a selection of Kira’s visuals to display at our next Fèmmme Fraîche party on June 30th. We had a quick chat with Kira about her work, inspirations and what we can expect from her visuals on the 30th.
Kira DeCoudres
Hi Kira we’re super excited to have you as our third visual artist for Femmme Fraiche. So tell us a little about your creative background, how did you first get into visual art and what’s your journey so far.
It’s funny because I am a sound artist and only began creating visuals to turn my sample-tastic audio into music videos, making them easier to share and perform live with. I come from a Transmission Arts background (Check out Wave Farm!) which loves exploring varieties of methods for media-info sharing through radio and sound-based arts.
Awesome, so your work is in a range of media from, video, stills and music as well as combining all three elements, but how would you best like your work to be best displayed or best consumed by your audience and who would you describe as your target audience to be?
My Target-Walmart audience is often appreciated by millennials who recognize samples I use from childhood winked commercials; more generally, people with patience for media errors, mental dentation, abnorMalware soft wearers… I’ve always wanted to have my audio looped in a hotel elevator, or make some quasi-nauseating visual design to be printed as stick-on wallpaper or carpet. I think it would be hilarious to make commercials for an off-brand company, or to mass-produce temporary tattoos that move like GIFs.
Haha a movin gif tattoo would be pretty rad! So your work has a very distinct aesthetic feel to it and similar motifs running throughout, one might look at this and describe it as glitch style art but how would you best describe your work?
I am a Glitch Witch. I find it endearing when a machine is spazzing out—it’s Techno-Electrical Jazz when your lights flicker or your Skype call is out of sync. The Spontaneous Oops! is one of those sassy gifts of life. My work is sometimes called glitch, chopped & screwed, or just screwed up.
A Glitch Witch is the perfect description! So tell us, what are the main sources of inspiration for your works both visually and emotively?
OooOooh. I definitely owe a lot of my inspiration to the community of bacteria and viruses inside of me. They are totally co-piloting this flesh vessel; there are many parallels between bodily and media distortion.
Your work appears to be a combination of your own raw sourced material as well as borrowed items, in a collage style way, how do you source or create your material?
The secret is in the open-source sauce! Yummy. I have a great YouTube to MP3/MP4 convertor (free to download) that allows me to sample essentially anything from the audio-visual waste land of YouTube. Does that make me a digital dumpster diver?
A digital dumpster diver indeed! So what digital glitchey gems are you working on at the moment and where else can we see your work?
I’m currently in collaboration with Oya Damla of The Ear(Brooklyn, NY) – we are (A)live at the Digital Naturalism Conference in Phuket, Thailand working on an underwater augmented reality project and 3D sound design for a floating zorb ball… all the while accompanied by field biologists, hackers, media mashers, and tropical magic! It’s fantastic!
Of course you can also see my work on my socials (Links Below)
And finally what do you have in store for us at Femmme Fraiche on June 30th?
I’ve sent along a very fun media care package for the show on June 30th. Mixed in is some fresh footage from hacker extraordinaire Urs Gaudenz of GaudiLabs. Keep an eye out for some DIY microfluidic technology in those videos!
So there you have it, the digital dumpster diving, glitch witch! we're super looking forward to Kira's visuals on Saturday and don't forget to check out her work and support her on her socials below!
