Cassandra Zampini is a new media artist who examines the role of media in shaping our understanding of the world and our place within it.
M3 Black, 2023, screenprint on canvas, 20 x 20”
The Machine series confronts our perception of the meme as cultural language and truth. Memes not only spread ideas faster than any other form of communication today, they also convey references to familiar symbols, images, videos, phrases, and cartoons from popular culture or mainstream media. As vehicles or “points of recognition,” they have the power to legitimize or delegitimize individuals, groups, politicians, or ideas at a quick glance. Zampini extracts these symbols or ‘reference points’ of content intended for propaganda, and transforms them into the subjects of her artworks.
DataStream, composite video with sound, 31 minutes, 2019
M1 White, 2023, screenprint on canvas, 20 x 78”
Installation: The National Arts Club: Machine, 2023, screenprint on canvas, 14 x 22”
M3 Gold, 2023, Screenprint on linen canvas, 35 X 58in
P1, 2023, screenprint on paper, 14 x 22"
P2, 2023, screenprint on paper, 14 x 22"
P3, 2023, screenprint on paper, 14 x 22"
P4, 2023, screenprint on paper, 14 x 22"
P5, 2023, screenprint on paper, 14 x 22"
P6, 2023, screenprint on paper, 14 x 22"
Installation: The Museum of Fine Arts Houston: The History of Photography: Selections from the Museum’s Collection, 2020, #flex, 1 sec, 2018, Archival pigment print, composite photography, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in
DataMine
The Selfie. What begins as a personal expression to friends and followers quickly becomes data points in the continuous stream of information we ourselves create. We take photographs of ourselves for fun only to have it processed, characterized and analyzed by software and then stored in perpetuity. We now know that data can be replayed in ways that can ever so slightly alter our trajectory and re-chart our course; our society; elections; relationships.
DataMine, Installation View, DataMine, 2 sec (right), #flex, 1 sec (left)
#flex, 1 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#flex, 1 sec (detail view),Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#preggo, 1 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#sinkbooty, 1 sec (detail view), Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#duckface, 1 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#preggo, 1 sec (detail view) Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
DataMine, 2 Sec, archival print on dibond, 87 1/2 × 52 1/2 in
DataMine, 2 Sec (detail view), archival print on dibond, 87 1/2 × 52 1/2 in
DataStream
Datastream is constructed from thousands of clips of selfie footage posted on social media. Downloaded, aggregated, and strung together for the film, these clips or selfie movies contain reoccurring gestures, facial expressions, and camera perspectives. As one portrait disappears from the screen, it is replaced by another, revealing the uniformity of the modern-day portrait.
DataStream — An Installation, 2021, 7-channels on security monitors, 53 1/2 x 11 3/4”
Lucidity is a series of car dashcam stills pulled from popular social media and internet videos. Each abstract still is the final frame captured from a horrific car accident. Here the blurred abstractness is actually a glimpse of reality. It presents the sole moment of unexpected clarity, the final view before death that we would not have witnessed before this technology.
Still 3, installation image, 2023, dye-sublimation print, 12.8 x 22”
By distilling violent and highly sensationalized videos down to their final still, the work addresses the harm caused from watching repetitive tragedies fed from algorithms designed solely to increase viewership. In these instances, our digital culture can desensitize us to one of the most universal and difficult truths of our humanity — death.
Still 6, 2023, Installation image, dye-sublimation print, 12 x 12”
Still 6, dye-sublimation print on aluminum, 12.5in x 12.5in, 2022
Still 7, dye-sublimation print on aluminum, 12.5in x 12.5in, 2022
Still 4, dye-sublimation print on aluminum, 12.5in x 12.5in, 2022
Still 9, dye-sublimation print on aluminum, 12.5in x 12.5in, 2022
MediaWarfare is an exploration of how the spread of disinformation on social media can influence and shape our worldview, relationships, politics and opinions.
The 25 minute 17 second work is a compilation of hundreds of conspiracy theory videos by several hashtags aggregated from across the web. They range from the mildly comical #hollywierd or #FlatEarthers, to the deeply disturbing #SecondCivilWar, #PizzaGate, and #nothingcanstopwhatscoming. As one video clip disappears from the screen, it is immediately replaced by another. All of the audio is original to the videos, and is interwoven throughout the film depending on which clip is being played.
Where one might experience a single video in passing, MediaWarfare displays hundreds of similar videos concurrently – demonstrating the bombardment of toxic information experienced on social media.
Installation, 2023
Works Shown: MediaWarfare, #flex, 1 sec, #preggo, 1 sec
Liked
Women’s bodies have been objectified for centuries in all forms of media and advertisements, but today social media is the new form of communication consumed at an unprecedented scale and magnitude. To keep up with the billions of “likes” and comments on social media, women arrange themselves in bewildering numbers of carefully posed, curated and heavily edited selfies. The more sexualized the pose, the more likes and comments (and sometimes profits) she receives. The endless cycle refuels her desire for acceptance and plunges her further into the need to achieve cultural standards of beauty, while replaying the tapes for younger generations to aspire.
#youcantbeatthefeeling, 2022, installation view, Archival Pigment Print on Dibond, hand-inked by the Artist, 56 x 28 in
BrandHouse is a photographic series that explores the dark reality of what is lost when we use brands and social media to express our identities.
The work is created from hundreds of “brand selfies,” a trend that was discovered when hand sorting thousands of images from over 10 million selfies pulled from the web. Selfie takers hold up the same products over and over again in their photos, using the brand’s messaging already alive in the popular imagination to represent themselves. They are, in part, taking ownership of the brand, but what about us is lost when we use signs and symbols from advertisers and corporations to represent ourselves?
BrandHouse consists of three large-scale inked pigment prints each comprised of thousands of full-color selfies of people posing with their favorite consumer products. The work is named after the brands’ advertising slogans, #doubletheyou (Starbucks), #haveacokeandasmile (Coke), and #imlovingit (McDonalds). The same images are washed with a deep black ink, both obscuring and highlighting the images underneath. The inked brand-focused selfies create a ghostly inversion of the selfie, similar to the metallic qualities of a daguerreotype. The unique ink formula, a solution discovered after months of testing, creates different tonalities in the work – as you move around the piece the selfies appear, and then fade away.
“From afar, many of these images are reduced to something like old school television static, with buzzing layers of black and white seeming to resolve into stripes, but then dissolving back into crackly noise…up close, the amazing diversity of humanity seems to be collapsed a bit, each of us looking largely like our neighbors and friends when placed in front of a mirror with our smartphones.” — Collector Daily
Sector 1, 3 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, 50 3/8 × 30 in
The Sector series includes three unique pieces, each a compilation of more than 2,500 selfies that contemplates data at rest. The images are individually processed, hand-sorted, and organized by tonality to represent the number of selfies going up onto the web every 3 seconds.
11,440 Selfies, 2021, NFT
11,440 Selfies is a composite work aggregated from 3 years of harvesting more than 10 million selfies from the Internet. Each photograph was sorted by brands, gestures, objects and tonality and then hand placed into a massive 68GB composite work; arranged to imitate computer technology in data mining and its creation of large data sets.
The number, 11,440, represents 15 seconds of selfies uploaded to the web; from the estimated 24 billion that are uploaded every year. The work represents a tiny segment in the continuous flow of images constantly being uploaded to the Internet from people from all over the world.
View NFT Collection
