Visiting digital artist challenges society’s use of screens

As a digital media artist, Clay Harper works daily with bits and bytes and software and screens. So, it may come as a surprise that at the core of his creative thought and practice is a critique of the virtual and an advocacy for the physical.

“I am a digital media artist that insists on experience,” he said. “I’m just really interested in making people remember that art is something that you have to see in person.”

Harper is the first visiting artist-in-residence to inhabit the Sue Lemmond Helms Community Art House, a new space for artistic creation, education and collaboration donated to UNC Charlotte for the College of Arts + Architecture. The house was recently dedicated in memory of its namesake, a longtime local arts educator and supporter.

Harper is in his second year teaching in the Department of Art and Art History, where his courses have included basic animation, game design, video art and animation production. While he helps students master the latest technologies, he also challenges them to consider their relationships to screens.

“I am interested in the politics of screens,” Harper said, adding that in contemporary society, so many of our experiences are “mediated or filtered through the screen.”

For example, watch how museum visitors engage with the art they are viewing. Often, people move from artwork to artwork with their phone cameras raised, snapping pictures rather than approaching art as “something that offers us alternative ways of seeing,” he explained.

As the inaugural artist-in-residence in the Sue Lemmond Helms Community Art House, Harper said “there is so much potential in that property. I see a lot of opportunities for workshops and demos or artist talks but also for informal gatherings like a community meal or a game night or watching a movie. I think that kind of thing is important for artists.”

Read more on the College of Arts + Architecture website at https://coaa.charlotte.edu/2024/09/13/visiting-digital-media-artist-challenges-our-use-of-screens/.