Kenna Lewis

A Moment of Our Time is a website comprising of responses from the community answering prompts written by myself. My prompts are intended to get the participant to recognize the loaded meaning of certain public spaces and connect with those meanings in relation to their own lives. During the past year, the conventions of human interaction have changed dramatically. I chose to confront interaction in my work, by creating a space for digital interactions, informed by physical spaces that were once havens for person to person contact. The work consists of both a website and printed media. Participants in A Moment of Our Time encountered a flier with a QR code leading to a separate prompt page, which displayed a prompt and an anonymous submission form allowing for the participant to respond. Participant’s responses are posted anonymously on the site. Prompts during this run of the project were concentrated in the Cincinnati area.</p>

The Matter (2020), is a conceptual performance piece exploring ideas of capitalism in the digital age and the efficacy and ethicality of artificial intelligence (AI). In The Matter, I play though a video game centered around a virtual pet called a “Matter”. The Matter is virtual creature that can be raised and cared for on a home computer or laptop. I describe the Matter as “belonging to the Matterus Familiaris genome,” that is created by “personifying an existing string of code to give qualities similar to a house pet like a dog”. The Matter’s conceptualization is inspired heavily by Natalie Bookchin’s Metapet and “villager” entity game mechanics in the best-selling, multi-platform sandbox video game, Minecraft, created by Markus “Notch” Persson.</p>

In Partnership with Fifth Third Bank and The University of Cincinnati (UC). During this project, I led a group of peers in creating a mural celebrating the senior athletes on UC’s men’s and women’s basketball teams. The installation served as a way to assist Fifth Third Bank in connecting with UC Basketball fans.

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