iLRN2020 6th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network

Phillip Birch lives and works in New York. His work utilizes animation, video game design, sculpture, and performance. Focusing on technology and history, Birch’s work traces a possible trajectory of human development. His work and research explore topics such as schizophrenia, autoimmune disease, body horror, Catholicism, and game theory. Birch has had recent exhibitions, performances and screenings at Reyes|Finn, Detroit, Jack Hanley, NY SculptureCenter, NY, Joan, Los Angeles, 47 Canal, NY, Essex Flowers, NY, The Loft: Servais Family Collection, Brussels, and MUMOK, Vienna. He has given lectures at Yale University and Parsons School of Design. His work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.


About the iLRN 2020 Artist/Curator "Studio" Visits Program

Traditionally artists share their work with curators and collectors by bringing them to the studio and showing them what they are working on. This has always been a challenge for the digital artist because often the best place to experience the work is not in person but through a digital interface. With the coronavirus pandemic this is still a challenge for digital artists but now it is also a challenge to every artist and every curator that is trying to either show what they are making or see what is being made by others. Thinking about the new interfaces through which we are now communicating, our idea was to leverage the video conference model and ask artists and curators to show what it looks like, from their digital point of view, when they are making their work or when they are scouring the web to discover emerging practices. By sharing their screens, and walking us through their work and process, we get a clearer sense of what our new normal looks like, but we also discover, in this age of isolation, a new form of intimacy in which we see as another sees, navigating their virtual habitat as they experience it.

Organized and curated by Justin Berry (Yale University) and Johannes DeYoung (Carnegie Mellon University)