Agustin Rosa, Studio Art MFA, 2022
Agustin Rosa is a new-media artist from Rosario, Argentina. He runs Dead Alive, an experimental press that explores the intersection of collaboration, storytelling and technology. Agustin uses digital fabrication to create speculative objects that require some re-configuration of the relationships between machine and animal, media and human, subject and object.
Project Overview
Few things are more intimate than our smartphones, an artificial object we cradle, speak into, hold up to our faces and even fall asleep with. Yet most of these physical interactions are engineered by consumer culture technicians. Object of My Affection is a collection of custom cases for smartphones that invite the viewer to touch in playful new ways. By remeshing the phone, the case becomes a site of material imagination, a speculative and theatrical prosthetic. Touch is unique because of the fluidity we feel with the touched object, the object touching back, undrawing the boundaries between self and other.
Process
Object of My Affection began as a series of sketches for possible new gestures and motions involving smartphones. These sketches became the basis for CAD models that could be 3-D printed. After several iterations (and one somewhat ill-fated attempt at casting the cases in silicone) the 3-D printed objects were finished by using a combination of spray paint and clear coating to provide color and texture. Two working phone cases were created, as well as a series of smaller, even more speculative prototypes.
