EMBRACING THE WEIRD & UNFAMILIAR: PRIYANKA MAKIN ON PROCESS, TECHNOPHOBIA AND ART

An interview by Maris Juwono

MARIS: How would you describe this project, and how it relates to the concept of fear? 

PRIYANKA: I set out to build a sort of “personal device.” Essentially, it’s a video sculpture with a screen, and it’s encased in a biodegradable plastic–a material I made myself. It really is kind of a doomsday, semi-futuristic version of a phone. I’ve drawn out different animations and video clips of texts coming through, new job posting alerts, AI videos of cats and stuff to play on the screen to mimic a phone. 

i have a lot of technophobia, or fear of future technologies and what they might do to people. 

M: Why did you decide to focus on technology, surveillance and censorship? How do technology, bio-material, and imagery intersect for you? 

P: I’m a technologist [and engineer] by trade. I think a lot about technology: I engage with it a lot, and I design it. Being in a position like that forces me to think about the ethics of designing good technology. A lot of things that I notice about the technology that we engage with every day freak me out. These devices know too much. People don’t even know what data they’re giving out or what data is being held on to. 

There are three components [to the piece]: the technology, the bio-material, and imagery/animation. Inherently, my work in the past has always been at the intersection of really weird or seemingly different things: different materials, mediums, and concepts. But I look at a lot of it as all being technology. There’s so much science, technology, and repetition needed to make a bio-material. [The artistic process] is super scientific, and [there were a large] number of digital applications I had to interact with to make just a few frames of animation. I don’t know–all of it is technology to me, and all of it is art to me. Even the building of technology. 

all of it is technology to me, and all of it is art to me.

M: I don’t even know how you would go about making a biodegradable plastic…

P: I’m all self-taught and just cooking weird goops on the stove, hoping it comes out right. [It] literally is cooking. I don’t even cook myself food to eat, but I spend hours cooking these weird goops. 

M: I don’t know how many apps are needed to code all that animation either…

P: I’m learning on the fly, honestly!

M: I love how you merge engineering and technology into your art as a multidisciplinary practice. How did you start incorporating a ‘STEAM’ framework in your creative work? 

P: My undergrad was in engineering in Boulder, Colorado, [after which] I went to art grad school in the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, in their Interactive Telecommunications Program. It was so fun. It was my excuse to go buck wild and throw glitter on my motors, and just make really weird things. Things I would have never thought about making in any school, or would be encouraged to make.

I was strongly encouraged by my family members to study something in STEM [because] they told me I would always have a very successful, prosperous future in [that] field. I signed up for engineering school not even knowing what [it] was at 18, even though I always had these artistic inclinations. After graduating and working as an adult, I always felt like part of me was missing, so I slowly got back into art. 

I took a watercolor class and it kind of just snowballed. I started working as a studio assistant and a digital consultant for artists in my city. I started designing weird motor systems for kinetic sculptures that they wanted to build, and went from there. Then I went to grad school studying in an arts and engineering/new media art program. And I just loved it. It was so much fun.

M: I know you’ve mentioned the potential difficulty in others’ understanding of your work due to its experimental/multidisciplinary medium. What would you want audiences to understand about your piece outside of their direct experience/engagement with it? 

I kind of mentioned that I really struggled within myself to find this piece and what it would be. I went back and forth with a lot of ideas and what I was trying to say. I think [that with] a lot of the work I do, the main takeaway is that everything I make is all prototype, it’s all process, it’s all experiment. It’s all a seed for maybe a future [piece of] work. It’s a way for me to untangle different ideas or thoughts I have in my own head–it might not make sense to everyone.

We’re all works in progress, this piece is a work-in-progress. I think it’s okay if things are confusing. 

M: I’m curious to know what you think about institutional influences on artists and creativity. Do you think that influenced your interpretation of ‘fear’ as a focus?

P: For this piece specifically, honestly, the main influences were really the news, and social media. I think right now there is a lot of fear to be had. I think there’s also a lot of confusion, and what adds an extra layer to it is that the whole point of news outlets and social media is [that they’re] incentivized to sensationalize news: to make it big, and to keep your attention. Social media is all about attention and keeping your eyes on the screen. So I don't know it’s very loaded; my fear was very heavily influenced by media that is made to make me afraid. And that’s a hard thing to come to terms with as well in the piece. My fear is literally translated into currency. My fear and my attention is dollars. 

my fear was very heavily influenced by media that is made to make me afraid...that's a hard thing to come to terms with...

M: I read in your application that you were excited to work with Club Rambutan and connect with other artists! What excites you or what has been most meaningful to you about working in a cohort with so many other amazing, intersectional and interdisciplinary artists?

P: For sure the best part of this whole process were all the check-ins. Hearing from such talented artists from all over the country [of] all different types of mediums was just awesome. They have such innovative takes on fear, things I never would have thought of, and their art is of such high quality: it’s thought-through, prototyped, storyboarded, shot once and then [reshot]. It’s so amazing and inspirational to see people put so much care into their craft. The critique and feedback also was always exactly what I needed to hear in [those] moments, especially since I was struggling so much with this piece. The feedback was always so thoughtful from the other artists and the CR team too. 

M: What would you want people to understand about you or themselves through your project?

P: I think with most of my work, the point is that everything is process. Things are weird, and not just in making art, but in life in general and experiencing different things. Things are weird and confusing and always changing. I’m always just trying to reassure myself that when stuff doesn’t make sense or what I made isn’t perfect, it’s okay, and all of it is seeds, or content for the future. Even with these fears of a feeling lost to a digital void, and being watched, and feeling sucked in, living a repetitive life, and being disconnected--you know, things are always changing, that’s not [going to be] forever, we have more agency than we think we do.  

You can always regulate your nervous system, like go touch grass. Maybe not if you’re based in Phoenix, but you could eat a banana, or something. Something can pull you out of that spiral that you think you’re going down.

the point is that everything is process.

M: What inspires you to create? What inspires you to push past–or embrace–fear?

P: What I am always excited to do is learn something new or achieve a new skill. This piece for me was a lot of that. I have never applied these biomaterials to my artwork before [or worked] with screens like this [to make] a video sculpture. I’m also brand new to animating, [using] Procreate, [and] making video content. So all [the] parts of this piece I [was] just learning as I [was] making. 

Actually, my past work is usually very colorful, humorous and illustrative in style. I’ve gotten feedback that it’s very good for kids, so when I was told the prompt was fear, I felt like this was off-brand for me. I’m usually like a rainbow art teacher. But then I thought about it harder, and actually, a lot of the humor in my past work is a little bit self-deprecating [in] exploring weird thoughts, fears, and anxieties I have. So I’ve been engaging with fear in my work this whole time, which is something I didn’t realize initially.

I want to make stuff that is fun, that people feel like they have access to and can engage with, in hopes that it’s not [necessarily] inspiring, but someone could think, “hey, that’s fun, I could do that too.” And that’s part of my philosophy of open source. In the past, it’s been applied to hardware in the company I used to work for: all the products were open source projects, so all the design files and code used to make them were published. The idea is that we push forward innovation if we’re open with our information. Everyone has access to it, [including] maybe people who wouldn’t normally, and they will have brand new, awesome ideas to riff off of what we put out. I think this also applies to art, so I’m hoping to put together a lot of documentation about how I made this piece to hopefully [show that] it’s not rocket science–anyone can do it. 

You can see Priyanka Makin's full final project by purchasing Issue 04: Amygdala.