Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Let us know what you thought about Keller and Dixon's lecture in this short, 6 question, anonymous survey. Thank you for your feedback.

About the Lecture
For Keller and Dixon humor is both a common coping mechanism for life’s ailments and a lens that allows them to revel in failings and celebrate futility in their creative work. As multidisciplinary artists and designers, each uses a specific working methodology - Keller operates with intentional, clever endurance while Dixon employs quick and novel intuition. When working together, they march forward by embracing merriment in absurdity. In this lecture, Keller and Dixon will trace their bodies of work through parallel, syncopated, and divergent paths of inquiry. In their lecture they discussed the importance of intentional and accidental misinterpretation as a means of understanding the contemporary human condition; the necessity of mirth in their working lives and partnership; and the laughable ridiculousness of life’s supreme ability to complicate communication.

About the Lecturers
Keller and Dixon are artists/designers working collaboratively and independently in Homer, Alaska. Both received Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art + Design and Masters of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Dixon straddles a wide set of mediums in her playful and process-oriented work. With a foothold in graphic design and creative direction, she often reaches into broader terrain including experiential work, installation, and product design. Her projects are spurred on by the fallibility of communication, attempts at connection, and unintended output. Dixon received a U.S. Presidential Award, a place in the permanent design collection at the SFMOMA, and the honorable ranking of Art Director’s Club (ADC) Young Gun. Her clients have included the New York Times, Nike, Volkswagen, and Coach. She acted as Design Director for installations featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale and has shown at the Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.

Keller is attracted to the uneasy tension generated by our ubiquitous use of technology. His work utilizes entertaining misuses of technology and failures of communication that result from brute-force manipulations of appropriated material and rules-based systems. He has received acclaimed attention for his ongoing series consisting of a self-portrait taken every single day for the past 17 years called The Adaptation to My Generation and digital manipulation via an algorithm of The Simpsons among other projects. Keller's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the 2012 transmediale in Berlin, the Australian Centre for Photography in Paddington, and the Seoul International Media Art Biennale in Korea. 

Additional Events
The artists also participated in the following events for the RMCAD community:

Next Day Q&A Session 
Thursday, February 11, 2016

Studio Visits and Portfolio Reviews
Thursday, February 11, 2016
and Friday, February 12, 2016

Reading List
Additional research materials suggested by Keller and Dixon can be found here.

Image credit:
Anonymous Hugging Wall, Keetra Dean Dixon. Courtesy of the artist.