Wayne State Portfolio

Oblivion Series

Created in Unity, Video and VR Experience for Headset and Browser

Oblivion (chapter one)

Oblivion (chapter two)

Set against an upbeat pulsing background Oblivion a cell-like object that travels through a shifting psychedelic organic-like landscape of squiggly lines, curving shapes and bizarre textures that nevertheless seem to recall a close view of some microbiome/forest full of life and organisms. In this way, KT Duffy seeks to enthrall their audiences and bring them into hypothetical biologies. Playful and enthralling, Oblivion, and by extension its creator, have created a merging of art, speculative biology and technology. 

Oblivion was born from KT’s residency in Finland, this allowed them to take long walk in the forest, something that is reflected in the visuals of the piece, it also is a reconnect with nature for the artist as America’s relationship with nature is adversarial at worst and commodified at best. This, alongside a different approach to community and freedom of movement made KT recontextualize their practice. As such, Oblivion takes a meditative quality, with the soundtrack imitating the rhythms of life while we witness this “organism” leisurely wander the space involved in its own rhythms changing or taking nothing in the environment it exists in harmony with. – Curator Rene Cepeda

Chicago Creative Network UX/UI

App Designed and Developed for the Chicago Park District’s Chicago Creative Network, a new social app for creatives in Chicago

Generative Plotter Drawings Summer ’22

p5.js, x+y plotter, Stonehenge papers, Jelly Roll pens, metallic markers

Chicago Arts Census Branding and UX/UI

Branding and UX/UI Design for Acre Project’s Chicago Arts Census, which aims to quantify the impact artist have on the economy.

The Idol

My MiniGolf hole contribution to Par Excellence Redux at the Elmhurst Art Museum

For this work I took inspiration from some of the mini golf courses I frequented as a child, which were often structured around large sculptures depicting cultural icons, like a dancing hotdog. The icon I would like to pay homage to via Mini Golf is the Sheela na gig, which is an early stone-carved “meme” from the 12th century which can be found all over Ireland, usually above a doorway or an entrance. Depending on who you ask, the Sheela na gig, also referred to here as “the idol” is the remnant of a pagan goddess, a fertility figure, a warning against feminine lust, protection against evil, or a reinterpreted as an empowering feminine gargoyle. My project, “The Idol” is intended to me all these things. However, my idol is no longer a vestige of an unknown past or origin. They are a queer feminist futurist idol of the mini golf universe, rendered in neon patterns and slick acrylic surfaces.

i want to watch you watch it burn

Solo show at Galleri Urbane in September 21

“i want to watch you watch it burn” is named after a line in “The Melting of the Sun” by St.Vincent, off her new album Daddy’s Home, which I listened to nonstop in the final sprint for this show. “The Melting of the sun” refers to the perceived permanence of the sun, which is a symbol of institutional power, normative notions of personhood and sentience.

This installation, as well as the individual entities living within, manifests just after the moment of all-encompassing collapse, where all power structures and those trying to survive under the cis-het-ableist-white supremacist/human supremacist norms are smashed into a chaotic ball of destruction, chaos, and beauty to spawn something new and never before seen from the detritus of the collapse. Nothing living in that collapse will become the outcome, but we must trust that we did the work to make this undoing of everything come to fruition.

The title is both a statement of love and solidarity to those I love and whom I work with to envision this new plane, and it is also a callout and an accountability statement to those who traded their humanity for power, which inevitably brought about this “The Melting of the Sun”.

Cataclysm/Catechism

My show at Coop Gallery! March 2021! Inkjet Prints on PhotoTek, PLA, Tablet, USB cables.

In this work I explore the idea that we are increasingly ensconced in microcultures, where every individual has their own separate and unique perspective on the nature of reality

Evidence of Our Own Primitive Nature

Acrylic, custom PLA hardware, vinyl, plywood, cables, monitors, looped video animations, custom software, LEDS, 2019

Evidence of Our Own Primitive Nature magnifies moments of interaction and genesis within a series of speculative microcosms to propose an alternative modality, where no entity is bound to a singular device, reality, or substance. The title of the exhibition is taken from a line in Jeff Vandermeer’s “Annihilation Trilogy” whose main character is an invading biological entity which can neither be defined or contained. With the integration of digital fabrication and automated systems, Duffy creates an installation that recedes into the distance, disappears into the ground, and distorts the space around it. There is an implication of infinity that is emphasized in the modular aspects of the work and through visual mashups. The amalgamation of the physical sculptural aspects, automation, and color intensity, lend to the all encompassing effects of Duffy’s work. Duffy creates an environment in which the micro and macro coexist, and this conjures the viewers’ sensibility and awareness of the body seen on a molecular and ambient level.

Jurassic Warp

Browser Based Multilevel VR Work built with AFrame

Prior to the pandemic this two person exhibition with Maria Luisa Sanin Pena was set to take place at Ground Level Platform, Chicago, but was cancelled due to the early COVID lock downs. The themes in the physical show involved ideas of waiting for connection, as my collaborator was at a residency in Croatia, and finding a reliable connection for our collaboration was difficult.

However, Using my web code expertise and A-Frame I was able to create a multi-level gamified VR experience as our exhibition. It featured a never ending waiting room, a game where dinosaurs jumped over cacti, an internet “gravesite” where vintage web components wait out their time until they become popular again, and an internet void with custom friction filled UX/UI.

In the work we utilized a lot of tropes you find in spaces of waiting, like water features, doctors office chairs, reception desks, dinosaurs and cati. Though the work was intended to be on thing, we were easily able to tweak the concept to apply to the early pandemic, which seemed like a never ending waiting room.

Obscene and Uncontained

VR Experience for Headset and Browser

Obscene and Uncontained captures a moment of chaos just before the death of a system. While the system swirls and swims fighting against it’s death we see new conditions and new microcosms begin to emerge.

As we work towards a better world for us all we must understand that through destruction comes forth creation.

Organelle Sob

Video and audio made with Signal Culture Apps

Intelligentbelligerent.space

Diffused Stream Unfelt Shadow UX/UI

Frames

Not the Planet Not Spinning, The Ways We Record the Universe, Untitled, QT, Anomiea, Topali

Speci-mxns

for loops, automated plotter drawings, and other digital mashups

And I Can’t Say That I’ll Miss My Human Form

2017-2018, Foam, laser cut acrylic & plywood, tablets, USB cables, LED monitors, media players, custom software, vinyl, Dimensions Variable

This work is inspired by a lyric from Big Thief – and I can’t say that I’ll miss my human form, and I’ll crawl inside and cook until I’m born. The lyric suggests the ability to dispose of ones human meat suit and then crawl inside something to be born a new. Through segmented videos either behind or protruding from the form we witness the process of this transformation. As one things ends another is birthed, but often violent and chaotically. This installation captures a moment in between this destructive and generative life cycle.