Member Spotlight: Allison Berkoy
For our next NMC Member Spotlight JLS Gangwisch interviewed Allison Berkoy, read or hear the conversation below!
JLS Gangwisch
I’m here today with Allison Berkoy . Would you tell us a bit about yourself, who you are, where you are, what you’re up to?
Allison Berkoy
I am an artist based in Brooklyn, and I am an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Technology at New York City College of Technology, also known as City Tech. And that’s a part of the City University of New York, which is also known as CUNY.
JLS Gangwisch
What brought you to where you are now? Are you from Brooklyn, or are you a transplant?
Allison Berkoy
I am a transplant as of 2002. I’m originally from Chicago- Chicagoland- and originally my roots were in theater and performance. I was really heavily influenced by “performance studies”, which I studied at Northwestern and at NYU. They kind of had different flavors of redefining performance in an expanded way, in practice and in theory.
I became really interested in how different technologies could impact the way that stories were told and processed and particularly in these real time communal environments.
For a bunch of years, I played in a band as a projectionist, using real time video processing tools. It brought me further down this fascinating rabbit hole of what emerging media technologies can do differently in a live stage environment. Then I started making installations with life size figures, set up in these absurd situations and theatrical tableaus, and would bring them to life with video projection and sound. It was to me, basically, just continuing to make theater but on these different stages. And finding more freedom within the art fringe, more so than in the theatre fringe. Over time, I wanted to make these figures and installations interactive with audiences, and I was interested in different possibilities for constructing narrative and perception. And then moved deeper into code driven media so that each experience of the work could be different and unique and surprising, using physical computing for sensor triggered interaction. I’ve been obsessively making this work since then for a long time, maybe too long, but that’s kind of the story basically.
JLS Gangwisch
What band? Anyone we might know?
Allison Berkoy
I don’t think so. If you were around in 2005-2007, Other Passengers, was a band that I worked with a lot. I worked with a bunch, but I was with them for about three years, and you might know Baby’s All Right, which is a venue owned by Billy Jones, who was a part of that band. So, people probably recognize that name. But yeah, it was a really fun time. I kind of miss it. I mean, I do miss it, but I feel a little too old at this point.
JLS Gangwisch
What does the term new media art mean to you?
Allison Berkoy
So, part of my interest in getting more involved in the New Media Caucus has to do with this question. There are individuals who’ve been defining this term since around the 1990s, and thankfully spearheading the field. But I think we should ask: what does this mean more than 30 years later? The New Media Caucus as an organization is devoted to the development and understanding of new media art. How as an organization might we be defining it and redefining it? Is it multiple definitions? Is it a broad definition, encompassing most electronic and digital art, and more inclusive? What are the benefits of having it be a broader definition? What are the benefits of creating a more narrow definition, so it isn’t everything and anything, because digital technology is involved in so much traditional media output as well these days? So I’m interested in potentially redefining the term as a collective, rather than as a lone individual or academic or theorist. So that’s part of what’s exciting to me about being a part of the organization.
JLS Gangwisch
With the New Media Caucus specifically, you mean?
Allison Berkoy
I think so. I mean, we’re filled with new media artists, self-defined. And we’re filled with academics, theorists, and researchers, and people working in industry. And really wide-ranging, and coming from all over the United States, all over the globe.And what does it mean to us?
I’m a huge fan of these particular theorists who have launched the term and launched the field.But I do think we’re in a time where we can revisit it and say, how can redefining the term be of most benefit to the people who are involved in this field? We’re still so much on the fringe. It is moving more into mainstream, institutional exhibition and collection, but we still have a long way to go. So again, it goes back to this question of broadening and loosening and becoming more inclusive, versus more narrowly defining it. And what are some of the benefits and drawbacks of both of those things? Maybe it’s a definition that’s just in multiple, and there isn’t a singular definition. I’m interested in that as well. But I’m curious, because I don’t see a definition of what it is currently on the New Media Caucus website, but we are a new media art organization devoted to promoting new media art. That’s in no way meant as a criticism, I love the New Media Caucus, that’s why I’m here. But I think it could be a really interesting initiative to try to take on as an organization. And I think you are starting to do that by asking this question in your interviews. And reading some of the other responses of past interviewees. It’s really interesting to see the different responses, so thank you for that.
JLS Gangwisch
Thank you. What are you working on right now? What current or upcoming projects would you like us to know about?
Allison Berkoy
I have three main projects that I’m working on right now.The first two I’ve been working on with my students at City Tech, and that’s been really exciting. The first project is called Are You Prepared? It’s an interactive performance and installation where a talking balloon gives a lecture to a live audience on the subject of emergency simulation.And the balloon starts to target various members of the audience to come up to the stage to participate in training exercises, such as a ‘how high can you jump’ contest. I worked with my students at City Tech on the first systems prototype, and we’re looking for places to demo the next version, so if anyone reading this is interested, you know where to find me.
The second project, which I also worked on with my City Tech students, is called You Are Prepared, a riff on the first project which was forced by Covid and the inability to assemble as a live audience for a while. You Are Prepared is an interactive performance installation. It’s browser-based, for the home environment and someone’s personal computer.So, a one-on-one interactive performance experience with your computer, and it’s focused on “self-optimization strategies” and a series of training exercises using body controlled games. It’s just working with the standard webcam and microphone, and using the ml5.jsplatform for body tracking. I think it’s really exciting because it’s just using standard tools that are accessible to almost everyone.
The third project is very different.It’s called Your Brain is an Egg Yolk in an Eggshell, and it is looking at the vulnerability of our perception and the ability to rewire when our foundational systems fall apart. I think of this as our perceptual processing, and core systems in our brains, quite literally in our abilities to rewire after injury. It’s then also tied to our current moment, where it seems like all of our foundational systems are really falling apart, and the need to adapt and rewire to our current moment. That’s a series of what I call “electronic reliefs”, and they’re made with layers of egg yolk and eggshells and plaster gauze and video projection. It also has a series of interactive video sculptures displaying destabilized video and audio signals.
JLS Gangwisch
Well, the first one you said was almost done and ready and you’re looking for places to show it-
Allison Berkoy
I work iteratively. I’m really interested in working in an iterative process, and so I kind of make a version, I show it, I make another version, I show it. At a certain point, I usually lock it in, and I realize this is done. All these projects are in that phase where they have all been publicly or semi publicly shown, but they’re in another phase of development and looking for other places to show them.
JLS Gangwisch
Did you say the second one was internet based and we can probably go there right now and look at it?
Allison Berkoy
If you reach out to me. The problem with that one is that, because it’s browser based and running on Chrome, any time there’s a Chrome update it often breaks. And so I need to check it and make sure it works before I send it out. That one, I would say, is the most “prototypey” right now, where the systems are complete. I would love for people to contact me and test it out, but the content of it still needs further development before it’s really launched more, but it’s very close.
JLS Gangwisch
Where can people look at this work or other work? Do you have a website? Instagram?
Allison Berkoy
I have a website. It’s my last name. Berkoy.com, Instagram. A nd if anyone is in the New York area, they can contact me and see stuff in my studio in South Brooklyn. A lot of the work is set up there, and I would love to have people over for a cup of tea and talk about new media art together.
JLS Gangwisch
That’s incredibly generous. Is there anything else you want to talk about? Anything else you want the public to know?
Allison Berkoy
I could kind of babble endlessly. I’m really excited to be a part of the New Media Caucus. It’s an organization that I’ve been involved with to some degree since maybe around 2013 when I left grad school.
JLS Gangwisch
That’s an excellent end cap. Thank you so much for talking with us today.