new media art reviews
Frankenstein (2025) dir. Guillermo del Toro Date seen: October 24, 2025 Date reviewed: October 26, 2025 SPOILERS for both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation ahead. In directing Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro knew he had one chance to get it right, and that’s why he waited so long. I read del Toro’s introduction to THE NEW ANNOTATED FRANKENSTEIN, written in 2017, and…
Frankenstein dir. Emily Burns Date seen: June 6, 2025 Date reviewed: June-July 2025 (Yes, I am a procrastinator) SPOILERS for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ahead. The two or three people who read this blog will probably know that outside of my new-media-art-posting, I spent a good part of this year hyperfixating on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. When I found out that the Shakespeare Theater Company in…
Interspecies Love Letter by Cai Guo-Qiang and cAI Date visited: April 13, 2025 Date reviewed: April 16, 2025 From March 28 through April 13 of this year, The Kennedy Center had on display a series of installations under the theme “Earth to Space,” including an exhibit contributed by faculty and students from my alma mater. I came initially to check out my former professors’ and classmates’ work,…
or: i’m just saving this here for the future me who has an MLIS and answers to things
As UR LOCAL HATER of Refik Anadol’s work, when I heard he debuting an exhibit in D.C., I knew I had to see it for myself.
(April 2025 note: this post is an unfinished review of the exhibit PALINOPSIA at the University of Maryland Stamp Gallery, May 2024. The exhibit featured Jill McCarthy Stauffer, Margaret Walker, Trevan Jakaar Coleman, and Varvara Tokareva. I only finished writing about Jill McCarthy Stauffer’s pieces, and I have since lost my phone and documentation of the exhibit, but I wanted to post this…
When I first started this blog, I was determined to leave my institution out of it. But I said last post that UR LOCAL CYBORG has now become a travelogue of me running around the DMV to review my professors’ work. At this point, I’ve fully embraced it. For this post, I didn’t have to run very far to write the review: DANCE^2 was part of the “Moving With Screens + Machines” that took place right on…
Sometimes being UR LOCAL CYBORG while a full-time student means I’m running around reviewing my instructors’ work, in which case it’s quite lucky that my department has artsy faculty. In this post I’m reviewing a production by the Immersive Media Design technician and instructor for my Capstone course, Ian McDermott. In March, Ian rounded up a group of IMD students to help set up for an event at…
One of my English professors this fall advised us to engage in art forms that we didn’t know shit about. I’ve been taking that to heart. In September, I met a dance MFA student on campus, and incidentally discovered our shared obsession with cyborgs and cyberfeminist theory. I attended their thesis show Friday night. The concert featured three performances, three theses I assumed, and I realized…
It was three in the afternoon when I visited the Qatar America Institute for Culture (QAIC) last month. But the curtains were closed on the third floor, the dark rooms lit only by the flickering LED of digital projections. In the artificial blue light, I felt like I was underwater. Originally showcased in New York City, Pearls of Wonder is a multisensory exhibit that came to Washington, D.C. this…