The Speed of Thinking

Each year, the Van Every/Smith Galleries present an exhibition that highlights the work of one or more studio art faculty. This year, the Van Every Gallery presents digital works including games, prints, and animations by art team Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy. Having collaborated since 2006 after they met at the University of California, San Diego, their Davidson College exhibition focused on their artworks from the last five years. At the center of the exhibition is The Speed of Thinking, their mobile game that playfully connects global trade to global warming.

The exhibition is organized into three rooms about global trade: the first focuses on its products; the second, its infrastructure; and the third, a digital wilderness for escape or refuge. Developed during the team’s Fulbrights to Austria, Germany, Chile and China, all of the works consider how digital technology and its automated systems cultivate consumer desire and elicit unintended consequences.

Dietrick’s artworks have been shown internationally including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville; Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago, IL; MCA San Diego, CA; Long March Space Beijing, China; ARC Gallery Chicago, IL; and Soho20 New York, NY. Permanent public works are installed at the University of North Texas and the City of Tallahassee, Florida. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow and has attended residencies at the Künstlerhaus Salzburg, Anderson Ranch, and the Banff Center. With past funding from the University of California, Florida State University, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, her current research about transnationalism through the lens of seaports is supported by a 3-country Fulbright to Germany, Chile, and Hong Kong.

Owen Mundy’s work is best known for his online interventions that have been reviewed by over 300 international news media outlets including the New York Times, National Public Radio, and Wired UK. Recent exhibitions of his work include solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, London, Berlin, and Rotterdam. His work has been included in many books about internet art, including Art and the Internet (2014) and Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places (2015). With past support from the University of California, Florida State University, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) and the Fulbright Commission, his current research focuses on visualization of data sets—like smells, margins of error, and emotions—that are challenging to define.

Their joint collaborations have been shown at Transitio_MX in Mexico City, TINA B Festival in Prague and Venice, Temporary Home in Kassel during Documenta (13), Flashpoint Gallery in Washington DC, Cal State Fresno, CA, and the Orlando Museum of Art, FL. They have also completed public art commissions at the Coleman Center for the Arts and the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communication.

View the exhibition catalog below.