Digital Art Display Incorporates Work of Several Students at Rensselaer

Woodstock, N.Y. - The Center of Photography will present “Imaginary Homelands,” the digital artwork of nine artists from Ghana, Latvia, Israel, Malaysia, Spain, America, Brazil, and Bulgaria. The exhibit, on display Nov. 2-Dec. 22, comprises digital photography, video, and a Web-based interactive sculpture.

The theme is coping with change and preserving culture in today’s world through digital media, says Kathleen Ruiz, the project’s curator and assistant professor of electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The exhibit features the work of four Rensselaer students.

The artwork’s centerpiece is a wooden 4-foot-by-6-foot sculpture of an Asante loom designed by Kofi Amponsah, a textile designer and artist earning his doctorate at Rensselaer. In the center of the loom is a laptop computer. Viewers can learn traditional African weaving by clicking a few buttons to activate a simulated loom projected on the sculpture’s surface.

Ghanaians created the Asante loom in the 1800s and still use it today to weave kente cloth, an elaborate African fabric whose origin can be dated back to nearly 2,000 years.

Amponsah wants to instill a deeper appreciation of the traditional weaving that faces extinction because it cannot compete with today’s automated systems. So far, no one has been able to build an electronic machine to imitate the sophisticated process, says Amponsah, 41, who founded G. Kofi Design and Associates in 1988. The U.S. company produces a variety of kente clothing.

Contact: Jodi Ackerman
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