The Art of Contemporary Relics: Sophie Kahn, Digital Artist & Sculptor

State Of The Art

Sophie Kahn uses a 3D laser scanner to create fragmented sculptures that captivate viewers through their haunting beauty and visual association with death masks. Kahn's technique emerges from an interest in the restriction of technology and the narrow agendas of its design; in other words, she uses devices in ways they weren't intended to be used. In this episode, she discusses her discovery of this medium which expanded her practice beyond photography, and shares insights on her latest series currently in the works.

-About Sophie Kahn-

Sophie Kahn is a digital artist and sculptor, whose work addresses technology’s failure to capture the unstable human body.

She grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and is now based in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BA (Hons) in Fine Art/History of Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London; a Graduate Certificate in Spatial Information Architecture from RMIT University, Melbourne; and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was awarded a full tuition Trustee Scholarship.

Her work explores the resonances of death in the technological image. It owes its fragmented aesthetic to the collision of the body with new imaging devices. The precisely engineered 3d laser scanner she uses was never designed to capture the human body, which is always in motion. When confronted with a moving body, it receives conflicting spatial coordinates, generating glitch. She outputs this damaged data as prints, video and hand-painted, 3D printed sculptures. The works that result draw inspiration from funereal and memorial sculpture, and appear to be faux-historical forgeries – or contemporary relics.

Learn more at https://www.sophiekahn.net/

Follow Sophie at @sophie_k_kahn