ARTIST FOCUS: SONDRA PERRY
Sondra Perry uses digital tools in videos and performances that critically engage with past and present technologies of representation, mobilizing them in a reflexive manner that also plays with the dynamics of the immersive image in different ways
Learn about more about Perry's approach to AI-generated art through her project Lineage for a Phantom Zone. Perry used AI image generation in the creation of the installation phantom.menace. Lineage for a Phantom Zone explores the relationship between personal history and dreams, the erasure of Black history in the American South, and dreams as a channel to otherwise inaccessible sites of heritage.
Sondra Perry, ‘phantom. menace., 2020-2023,’ Vimeo posted by Sondra Perry, 11 September 2023 (duration: 3 min 29 sec). Available at sondraperry.com. Accessed 28 July 2024.
WATCH & LEARN
Inspired by the past use of her Newark, New Jersey studio as a hair salon named Trade Winds, the video is accompanied by three repurposed vintage barber chairs from the shop, which Perry transformed into kinetic sculptures. Drawing attention to the shop’s reference to the south-east trade winds in its name, she explores how historic events -- like the use of the winds by the Transatlantic Slave Trade to propel its ships -- continue to impact lives and dreams.
REFLECTION
Perry’s video images were made with AI through images generated from text prompts she wrote in DALL-E combined with videos and images of her New York gallery shot by her and the gallery team. Perry reworked the video with the editing software AfterEffects and Premiere Pro.
The main text prompt for the images in the video was “Two African American men, one in his 50s and one in his late 20s, stand in the middle of a crowded barbershop and shake hands.”