VSW’s incoming resident artists offer new takes on old technologies
By Patrick Hosken @patrickhosken[
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Before film, there was the magic lantern. And long before audiences packed into a cinema for the latest horror movie to chill their bones, artists performed phantasmagoric feats with projector-aided illusions.
Melissa Ferrari, a Los Angeles filmmaker and animator, first learned about the optical power of the magic lantern at a conference in Italy. The keynote speaker traced the history of horror theater using the 17th-century projector.
“They would raise the dead using the magic lantern,” she said, “with slides illustrated in the likeness of people who had recently died, including some political figures. Audiences didn't quite know how the projected image was being made.”
A week later, Ferrari spotted a magic lantern at a flea market. Her own journey creating what she calls “experimental animated documentaries” began shortly after.
Ferrari will bring both projectors she owns, as well as dozens of her homemade slides, to Rochester in December. She’s one of 12 artists selected for Visual Studies Workshop’s Project Space Residency program, which runs through the end of 2025.
More than 300 artists from around the world applied. A jury panel selected the final dozen, including creatives from Spain, Brazil and the United Kingdom. VSW announced the cohort in early July.
Other artists chosen for the program include Valentina Alvarado Matos, William D. Caballero, Jessica Chappe, Jamie Ho, Myah Asha Jeffers, Jackie Liu, Sydney Mieko King, Carmen Lizardo, Tetsuya Maruyama, Allie Tsubota and Yanbin Zhao.
The four-week residency gives artists access to VSW’s archives as well as unlimited studio time. They also receive a stipend and a place to stay in a VSW-rented apartment nearby.
Ferrari is in luck. VSW’s archives include tens of thousands of lantern slides, many sourced from libraries and museums. In November, she’ll come to Rochester — where her mother originally hails from — to work on her latest magic lantern project, a film about the history of medication abortion.
“A lot of that history includes botanical medication,” she said. “I'm hoping to find examples of plants used in that kind of medicine in their archive that I could then maybe reproduce.”
Hernease Davis, VSW’s assistant curator of education and public programs, said the work of the artists chosen for the residency reflects the organization’s focus on photography, film and new media.
“The definition of new media is also something that's unfurling,” Davis said. “New media could be, they're working in virtual reality, or they're working with new technologies like AI. We really are interested in artists who are doing work that is really pushing their mediums.”
Magic lantern animations, for example, are quite old, but the way Ferrari tweaks them with homemade slides and presents them on transparency film is novel.
At the other end of the technological spectrum is Jackie Liu, a New York-based designer who specializes in interactive media. Her art channels the primitive internet as it was in the early 2000s. She has created a digital memoir called “Chao Bing: A Read-Only Memory Experience” and a webcomic about losing a year’s worth of photos from her phone.
“I am really inspired by a lot of experiences that I've had growing up on that type of internet,” Liu said. “I spent way too much time on the computer as a kid, probably an unhealthy amount of time.”
Liu learned that nostalgia can be potent. Her VSW residency begins in November 2025, which means she has plenty of time to put creative ideas together before coming to Rochester. Right now, she’s eager to explore the Wayback Machine, a preservation tool of the Internet Archive digital library.
“What if you could read or experience some sort of story by looking at the snapshots of a web page over time?” Liu said of a proposed project. “If I feel like I've lost something or I can't return to it, I feel a lot of remorse — an interesting emotion to explore.”
Artists in the program have previously invited the public in to see how they put their pieces together. While they’re in town, Ferrari and Liu may choose to do the same. Davis said this practice breaks down barriers and creates an opportunity for dialogue and education.
“VSW is very much concerned about process,” Davis said. “The point of a residency is to give artists carte blanche to just figure things out.”
Patrick Hosken is an arts writer for CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].
Melissa Ferrari, a Los Angeles filmmaker and animator, first learned about the optical power of the magic lantern at a conference in Italy. The keynote speaker traced the history of horror theater using the 17th-century projector.
“They would raise the dead using the magic lantern,” she said, “with slides illustrated in the likeness of people who had recently died, including some political figures. Audiences didn't quite know how the projected image was being made.”
A week later, Ferrari spotted a magic lantern at a flea market. Her own journey creating what she calls “experimental animated documentaries” began shortly after.
Ferrari will bring both projectors she owns, as well as dozens of her homemade slides, to Rochester in December. She’s one of 12 artists selected for Visual Studies Workshop’s Project Space Residency program, which runs through the end of 2025.
More than 300 artists from around the world applied. A jury panel selected the final dozen, including creatives from Spain, Brazil and the United Kingdom. VSW announced the cohort in early July.
Other artists chosen for the program include Valentina Alvarado Matos, William D. Caballero, Jessica Chappe, Jamie Ho, Myah Asha Jeffers, Jackie Liu, Sydney Mieko King, Carmen Lizardo, Tetsuya Maruyama, Allie Tsubota and Yanbin Zhao.
The four-week residency gives artists access to VSW’s archives as well as unlimited studio time. They also receive a stipend and a place to stay in a VSW-rented apartment nearby.
Ferrari is in luck. VSW’s archives include tens of thousands of lantern slides, many sourced from libraries and museums. In November, she’ll come to Rochester — where her mother originally hails from — to work on her latest magic lantern project, a film about the history of medication abortion.
“A lot of that history includes botanical medication,” she said. “I'm hoping to find examples of plants used in that kind of medicine in their archive that I could then maybe reproduce.”
Hernease Davis, VSW’s assistant curator of education and public programs, said the work of the artists chosen for the residency reflects the organization’s focus on photography, film and new media.
“The definition of new media is also something that's unfurling,” Davis said. “New media could be, they're working in virtual reality, or they're working with new technologies like AI. We really are interested in artists who are doing work that is really pushing their mediums.”
Magic lantern animations, for example, are quite old, but the way Ferrari tweaks them with homemade slides and presents them on transparency film is novel.
At the other end of the technological spectrum is Jackie Liu, a New York-based designer who specializes in interactive media. Her art channels the primitive internet as it was in the early 2000s. She has created a digital memoir called “Chao Bing: A Read-Only Memory Experience” and a webcomic about losing a year’s worth of photos from her phone.
“I am really inspired by a lot of experiences that I've had growing up on that type of internet,” Liu said. “I spent way too much time on the computer as a kid, probably an unhealthy amount of time.”
Liu learned that nostalgia can be potent. Her VSW residency begins in November 2025, which means she has plenty of time to put creative ideas together before coming to Rochester. Right now, she’s eager to explore the Wayback Machine, a preservation tool of the Internet Archive digital library.
“What if you could read or experience some sort of story by looking at the snapshots of a web page over time?” Liu said of a proposed project. “If I feel like I've lost something or I can't return to it, I feel a lot of remorse — an interesting emotion to explore.”
Artists in the program have previously invited the public in to see how they put their pieces together. While they’re in town, Ferrari and Liu may choose to do the same. Davis said this practice breaks down barriers and creates an opportunity for dialogue and education.
“VSW is very much concerned about process,” Davis said. “The point of a residency is to give artists carte blanche to just figure things out.”
Patrick Hosken is an arts writer for CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].
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