Tench Cholnoky
Projects
p.01
p.02
p.03
p.04
What is Pixelmouth
//PIXELMOUTH is curated by four New York based artists of multiple disciplines. We are fascinated by how our physical and digital worlds interact, and what the future of this dual existence could be. Merging art and technology, we aim to tell stories while creating a platform for up-and-coming artists. Our explorations have primarily taken shape as one-night-only shows which feature multiple interactive installation pieces alongside a fusion of music and performance art.
My Role
//PIXELMOUTH is curated by four New York based artists of multiple disciplines. We are fascinated by how our physical and digital worlds interact, and what the future of this dual existence could be. Merging art and technology, we aim to tell stories while creating a platform for up-and-coming artists. Our explorations have primarily taken shape as one-night-only shows which feature multiple interactive installation pieces alongside a fusion of music and performance art.
My Role
In Pixelmouth everybody fills a variety of roles. I run the installation art programming, which includes artist outreach, curation, helping with installation, and show prep. I also function as Pixelmouth’s project manager. That role includes managing deadlines, creating info dockets on every artist involved in the show, calendar planning, file organization, and creating the timeline for each show. Lastly I function as Pixelmouth’s resident projectionist and VJ, engaging with performers and providing visual projections for the show performances. Those visuals are crafted custom by me in Touchdesigner.
In Pixelmouth my art is centered around what visual motifs we’ve decided fit the show theme best. I’ll start drafting potential visual styles for the show early on in the process and try to center the iconography and aesthetics I’m making around the show concept. Those visuals get used for show programming as well as being backdrops for all the performances for the night. My creativity also manifests in the form of a curatorial lens, with which we hand pick installation artists whose work resonates with the show.
Previous ShowsIn Pixelmouth my art is centered around what visual motifs we’ve decided fit the show theme best. I’ll start drafting potential visual styles for the show early on in the process and try to center the iconography and aesthetics I’m making around the show concept. Those visuals get used for show programming as well as being backdrops for all the performances for the night. My creativity also manifests in the form of a curatorial lens, with which we hand pick installation artists whose work resonates with the show.
06.07.24
Concept
WHAT IS MADE MUST BE MADE.
WHAT IS MADE MUST BE REMADE.
WHAT IS MADE MUST CHANGE.
WHAT IS MADE MUST BE REMEMBERED.
WHAT IS MADE MUST BE IN CONVERSATION.
We have only glimpsed into the digital realm through rectangles of glass, unable to absorb information without barriers. However, with the discovery of the five essential elements of this dimension, we finally have the technology to build the first functional entrance.
Tonight, we complete the portal.
Tonight, we enter the digital realm.
In enter here_ we built a portal into the digital world using the five principles of the digital world, fueling it with the daily screen time of the audience. Between each performance was a buffering in which participants would add their screen time to a clock that was projected onto the walls, steadily counting up with each input. By the end of the show we had over 250 hours of screen time from just one day.
My Focus
For enter here_ I focued on themes of rigidity and connectivity. Our concept stemmed from five principles of the digital world (retainment, automation, variability, modularity, and connectivity), as well as the idea that we were building a portal into this world. We decided on using scaffolding as a visual motif very early on, and I ran with that in my visuals. I also continued my mouth and eye experiments from the past few months and elaborated on those.
Regarding curating I wanted to work with artists whose work clearly engaged with at least two of the principles of the digital world. I wanted a fairly even split between the principles, but the subjects of the pieces could be anything at all. We structured our open call broadly around the five principles, and got a variety of responses that hit the mark. It was important that the subjects of the pieces were whatever the artists wanted, I used the principles as a way of threading a structural throughline between the pieces, rather than a conceptual one. Because of that, we got a very wide breadth of topics discussed in enter here_ but all of them involved
1. retaining or holding onto data
2. automating or replicating data
3. variability and changing dynamically
4. being made of modular parts that can be interchanged
5. connected individual parts that communicated with each other
Curating around structure instead of concept was a very new approach that I hadn’t considered yet. It was fascinating to think about how projects were engaging with concepts rather than which concepts they wanted to engage, and I think it led to a show that wouldn’t make sense on a concept level, but given that structure and scaffolding was the primary driver for the show, I thought it fit perfectly.
Documentation
2. Me performing in my VJ booth
4. Wide shot of my mouths projection
6. Installation by Tina Tarighian
8. installation by Arden Schager
3. Performance by MAKS
5. Performance by Magali, A Cult accompanied by my visuals
7. Performance by Bri Frei accompanied by my visuals
9. Installation by Yuelin Li
04.28.24
Concept
Daemons are attendant spirits that lay in our soul.
Daemons are computer programs that run as background processes.
Daemons are the inspiring force.
Daemons don’t interact with the end user, but are called on their behalf.
Daemons enact a series of tasks that are unseen to the user, retrieving data.
Daemons host web pages, perform tasks for apps the user uses, accessing files for the user.
Terminal Daemons plays with the daemons dormant in our computers, summoning them to the surface to
enact changes in the world around them.
My Focus
Terminal Daemons was a show about the silent scripts that run in the underbelly of our computers. Those scripts which we don’t see or interact with except as intermediaries to other things. We struggled to attach that idea to some kind of visual element, as the daemons inside your computer don’t have any interfaces.
For show visuals, I leaned into asset based art rather than my usual generative explorations. I had been working a lot on some eye and mouth networks in Touchdesigner which can be found in the experiments tab, and also played around a lot with different moth based visuals. I glitched and datamoshed videos of moths taking flight, controlled an fbx moth, and added some of my generative pieces from previous sets.
I also did an installation piece for Terminal Daemons. The installation was a projection seen through fabric. The projection was a glitched video of me searching through my computer for the daemon scripts and giving a background for the show using terminal and text edit.
Curation wise, this show only had one installation artist, being Tina Tarighian. I had seen her work previously and gave her free reign in terms of making something. She created a tool called Multimanifestion Supervitamin, which you can check out on her website here!
Documentation
2. Performance by Magali, A Cult accompanied by my visuals
4. Performance by Magali, A Cult accompanied by my visuals
6. Performance by MAKS
3. Performance by AMYGDALA
5. Performance by AMYGDALA accompanied by my visuals
7. Eye projections done by me
06.02.23
Concept
The power dynamics between user and machine have become unclear - constantly reversing roles between servant and master. What happens when we let go of our own knowledge and Follow the Machine? The machines are often functioning at a different level from our own understanding, being both literal and proverbial black boxes whose inner workings are too complex to understand. From our perspective, the output of the machine is seemingly random, and why it chooses what it does is almost divine. In order to Follow the Machine, we must fuel the machine. The machine cannot exist without our data, our inputs, and so we offer it every thought we think.
During the bufferings between performances we would collect information via audience questionnaires to feed the machine. Questions included
“What is your favorite color?”
“What’s your relationship with your mother like?”
“What is your favorite tree?”
“Do you dream?”
My Focus
Follow the Machine was all about the ambiguous relationship between leading the technology in our lives and letting it lead us. How often the power dynamics between user and machine flip as computerized decisionmaking becomes the norm. In that cat and mouse chase, the cursor became a clear visual interest for the show. A cursor represented exactly that relationship, the mediary between the digital and user. A cursor is in theory controlled exclusively by the user, but the reality of which choices the user is even presented with represent the power of the Machine.
The cursor and where it points became a driving force for my role in this show, and was the cornerstone of the visuals. In the buffering performances the cursor would slowly grow, shift and duplicate as we fed the machine more answers to more questions.
Regarding curation, I was looking for pieces that blurred the line of animacy in machines. I was looking for machines that could dance, could bleed, could sing and scream. This show in particular had a large emphasis on physical computation projects. Almost every installation was also interactive, asking the audience to participate in making the machines move, engage, and live. Having the audience actively control and influence the installations added another layer of engagement with the concept itself. The audience could pilot these living machines, but only in the ways the machines and artists themselves wished.
Documentation
2. Buffering performance by A. Kaz accompanied by my visuals
4. Installation by Gabriel Lee
6. Installation by Gabriel Lee
8. Installation by Mahima Jain
10. Installation by Terry Kahn
3. Performance by Magali, A Cult accompanied by my visuals
5. Buffering performance by A. Kaz accompanied by my visuals
7. Installation by Jill Shah
9. Installation by Ahona Paul
02.17.23
Concept
Our central focus: biomimicry - the ways that digital and natural worlds mirror each other. Centering the digital world around its biotic origins is a necessary first step towards integrating the digital into the natural. When building a digital world the only world we can look to for examples is the natural world, so digital creations involve some mimicry of the natural by necessity. Our wire networks become root systems, and our A.I. evolves like an organism, mutating and rearranging. The show rests in the space where machines and the forest can nurture each other. The reflection of the natural world exists in all digital creations. We invite you to reside in the space where machines and forests can nurture each other.
Auto-Organics was principally focused with digital replication of natural processes, and how interwoven the digital and organic realms were. We wanted to position them as bound together, not diametrically opposed as they so often are.
My Focus
We started Auto-Organics hot off the tail of Cyborg//HYPERMEAT. With some new knowledge and practice under our belt, I began to think about algorithmic botany, generative plant growth, and the verdant digital. Those conversations evolved into Auto-Organics. Auto-Organics was the first show I used Touchdesigner, but the vast majority of the visuals were still made completely from scratch at runtime in Hydra.
Regarding curation, I wanted to get a variety of people engaging with the natural world. Some folks decided to make pieces about climate change, about organic decay, machines who breathed, the stories remembered by soil, and the biomimicry of military weapons. This group of install artists needed a lot of set up and prep, we had to drill load bearing anchors into the ceiling to suspend sculptures and glass panels, projection map, and lots of other tech. I was thinking about digital naturalism in a very broad sense, and wanted to get a variety of folks working in sculpture, physical computation, projection, video, and installation.
Documentation
2. Performance by and Install by Tao Liu
4. Performance by Cass Yao
6. Installation by Lauria Clarke
8. Installation by Pepi Ng
10. Performance by Katherine Bahena-Benitez
3. Performance by ZAI accompanied by my visuals
5. Performance by and Install by Tao Liu
7. Installation by Julia Daser
9. Full Upstairs of show
11. Performance by Magali, A Cult accompanied by my visuals
12.02.22
Concept
As the digital world has taken over more aspects of human life, human bodies and the ways they interact have become mediated by digital processes. Cyborg//HYPERMEAT seeks to explore how digital technologies process and display the human form, and the inherent distortion, objectification, and obfuscation that is embedded in those processes. Through performance, dance, digital portraiture, and other mediums, we are uncovering and reckoning with the digital mediations that take place between our bodies every day.
It moves through both the digital and physical space with ease, shifting forms and functions at will. Its body is no longer a grounding material force; the body is now a contingency.
The digital age has deified The Cyborg, a pure amalgam of flesh and circuits, while simultaneously discounting the intrinsic fleshy power of the body itself.
If The Cyborg is detached from its body, it is because of its inherent modularity. It looks like us, it acts like us, but it is not us.
The Cyborg is capable of a digital plasticity that humans are not.
We cannot turn ourselves cyber without manufacturing HYPERMEAT—the pseudo-digital fleshy creations made in an attempt to chromatize our bodies.
Welcome to our exploration of the inherent distortion, objectification, and obfuscation embedded in the formulas of how digital technologies process and display the human form.
Welcome to Cyborg//HYPERMEAT
My Focus
Cyborg//HYPERMEAT was Pixelmouth’s first show, which meant a lot of it was learning on the fly. Learning how to run a show, how to be an effective organizer, what a curator does, managing a dozen people for the first time, and learning how Pixelmouth was going to function in the future. We tried a lot of new things with this show, and some of it stuck. It was my first time VJing for a long period of time, and at the time I was only using Hydra by O. Jack, a javascript environment built for live coding video. I had started two months prior and was still getting my footing in performing. You can check out some of my old hydra scripts I bookmarked here, here, and here.
Regarding curation, I really had no clue what I was doing. We did our open call and collectively selected artists whose work we thought would look good in the show, and also folks we knew we could work with on something so experimental. Many of the artists ended up spending a few days before the show working in the space, and I was able to puzzle out some of the things they needed my input on as we went along.
Cyborg//HYPERMEAT was a great test of what Pixelmouth was capable of, and in it I found a lot of inspiration moving forward, as well as where my energy was best put. We clarified roles, delegated, and made much more educated plans in future shows.
Documentation
2. Installation by Robin Altman
4. Performance by Storm Hartley & Soft Abilez
3. Installation by Pepi Ng