Carla Gannis
The Garden of Emoji Delights
triptych animation, 2014 © the artist
In the Garden of Emoji Delights one of the intentions is to mash up popular historic and contemporary sign systems, and to diversify and expand the Emoji lexicon through this process. The current speed of technological advancements suggests biological organisms and the environment are irrevocably changing. In light of this, it is fascinating to discover how easily the visual vernacular of our day aligns with the symbology of a rather inscrutable artist from 500 years ago. The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch's most ambitious work, embodies the conflicts, humor, darkness and absurdity of human, earthly and cosmological conditions. Remixing Bosch’s garden with the contemporary language of emoji is alternately parodic and critical. The reflections are on the human tendencies, ideologies, or societal constructions that have remained unchanged for centuries, while other facts speak to the radical paradigm shifts that have occurred as a result of technology and cultural revolutions.
Carla Gannis is an interdisciplinary artist, technologist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. Gannis's work has appeared in exhibitions, screenings and internet projects across the globe. Recent projects include Portraits in Landscape, Midnight Moment, Times Square Arts, NY and Sunrise/Sunset, Whitney Museum of American Art, Artport. Publications who have featured Gannis’s work include The Creators Project, Wired, FastCo, Hyperallergic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, El PaÍs and The LA Times, among others. She holds an MFA in Painting from Boston University. Currently, she is Industry Professor at New York University (NYU) in the Integrated Design and Media Program, Department of Technology, Culture and Society, Tandon School of Engineering.
