Review Santa Fe: Anna Reed: Merging Dimensions

Review Santa Fe: Anna Reed: Merging Dimensions by Daniel GeorgeJanuary 9, 2025

©Anna Reed

We are wrapping up our look at the work of artists from the 2024 Review Santa Fe portfolio reviews. While this is a small representation of what I was able to view during the two-day event, I look forward to featuring others’ projects sometime in the future. Today, we have Merging Dimensions by Anna Reed.

Anna Reed is a Chicago-based artist whose work addresses the themes of identity, post humanism, fragmentation, and the boundaries of virtual space. How and where do we exist? Born into Atari and grappling with AI she is continually curious about the intersection of humanity and tech. Created through Xerox, scans, and other low-fi devices, she often uses her body as source images. The physical body confronts the screen and pushes the invisible boundary of human, device, and the virtual. She collaborates with machines and platforms alternating decisions as the works move from physical to digital and back again.

Follow Anna on Instagram: @annaoreed

©Anna Reed

Merging Dimensions

I grew up at the pivotal time of technological change. Landlines were replaced with cell phones, email replaced letters, inexpensive laptops replaced computer labs, and social media has since replaced everything else. Having lived with and without an online world I began to question the nebulous boundaries between these modalities and consider the points of intersection and overlap. Our media saturated world shapes how we see and project ourselves. I have felt the physical pain of staring into a screen, acknowledged the haunting specter of surveillance, and felt the fear and anxiety for a world I cannot see, hear, or touch. Simultaneously I have found respite in curated programs and felt comforting closeness of distant loved ones through computer generated light beams. Guy Debord wrote, “Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.” That the representation is in turn being directly lived. Online programs track and store our behavior and we become code and algorithms. Do we have a human future or have we become commodities as we project and consume our own images? Is our future already automated and curated for us? Do we have a choice in the formation we seek or do we live in our own echo chambers? It is from this uncertain place that I create work. I use my body as source imagery through lens based devices creating an intimate performance between human and the machine. Digital photographs, captured through low-tech devices, create intimate moments where technology and humanity converge. Vivid color and fragmented images both draw the viewer in and obscure information. They evoke emotions of connection, isolation, closeness, and vulnerability, prompting us to question which of our versions of self are complete.

©Anna Reed

Daniel George: What led you to begin your visual explorations of technology and self?

Anna Reed: I’ve been making work about identity for a long time and questioning that space between what we think of ourselves and how other perceive us. However teaching led me to explore the intersection of self with technology. In teaching photography, I’ve participated in the transition from analog to digital and witnessed the changes in imagination of the output and speed of process. With the onset of cell phones and particularly social media on smart phones I became more aware of the extension of myself. I also saw my students engaging in ways that I thought were too public and sharing too much. I began to question why I had such a different relationship with my device. I wondered if I was just out of touch or if my experience before the online world made me have a differing value system. Seeing your opposite made me question both myself and them. During this time I also taught in the first school district to go 1:1 with the Chromebook. Our schools would use the device and our information/responses was sent back to Google for updates and adjustments. I watched the growth of platforms and changing programs and felt a draw to be current and stay up to date on everything. There was an incredible draw to do more. I now have 5 email accounts, 4 social media accounts, websites, and countless chats, texts, and notifications to monitor every day. I felt the fragmenting of my life and I began to question which of these versions of myself was complete. The answer for me was in making work to piece myself back together.

©Anna Reed

DG: The visual quality of your images is both fascinating and fun, and I cannot help but wonder about the degree of play and experimentation that goes into each piece. Would you mind sharing more about your process—of trial and error, or the investigation of different technologies?

AR: I love old tech. There is a slowness and surprise factor that forces me to respond to the materials rather than only direct them. I can press the button on a copy machine or flatbed scanner, but I have to wait for the results. In our instant digital world, this unpredictability becomes a magical place for me. The scanner has a 1 inch depth of field so I often have to press my body hard into the screen to get any detail. I can scan for hours waiting to see if the pose is right or the gesture is visible. Often, I just scan to get a collection of images or see results of a particular technique. Later I’ll sort through my files when I have an idea or feeling I’m trying to convey. In the editing phase I layer images, playing with colors and masking areas until the final composition reveals itself. I add a color layer but most of color nuances happen as my photograph layers interact with each other. I start with intention and let the machine or programs make some of the decisions. In thinking about the nature of the online space I wanted to incorporate techniques to fragment and glitch the work. I have a few broken phones and cheap scanners that help me but I also enjoy randomizers or pixel sorting programs. I take what the program creates and re embed that into my final composition. Several years ago I was introduced to my first experimental printer. I was given the directive that I could feed anything through that would fit, and encouraged to play. Since then it’s been a collaboration of me and the machine. Originally I made a surface of various scraps to see which material I liked the best. It turned out that the collage of scraps was the most exciting part. I continued collaging a substrate with papers, fabric, and paint in both and intentional shapes and then feeding that surface through the printer. I never know how it will turn out. I don’t know exactly which parts will become more saturated, if the printhead will leave an ink smear, if the registration is accurate, of if the entire piece will get jammed and destroyed in the printer. I guess every work is part intention, part surprise from start to finish. There is a great deal of intention but I always leave space to be surprised or pivot if something unexpected happens. Two of the works shown here are the result of failure. In one the adhesive failed. In the second the program settings and physical machinery created an entirely unwanted result. Incorporating the failure is the magic.

©Anna Reed

DG: While in Santa Fe, we discussed your focus on hands and the importance of gesture (particularly with the body of work, Signs). Would you mind sharing more with our readers about your intentions here?

AR: Yes, I’m capturing the physical parts of ourselves that activate the online space; our eyes, face and hands. I once tried to describe the difference between the digital and the real, but what is real? Is something you touch more real than something you think? I’ll instead refer to the physical and the online spaces. We use physical bodies and physical hardware to navigate the online and virtual spaces. Both my physical and virtual selves are fragmented and inextricably entwined. We exist in parts. The hand cradles the phone, swipes a screen, and scrolls to new virtual spaces. The ear responds to a notification, the face unlocks a device or pays a bill. I’m interested in capturing not only the physical action but what it means socially. A swipe is an immediate acceptance or rejection. Many of our online interactions have become polarized of only love or hate; we like it or we troll them. I’m also questioning our awareness of these interactions. Each of these works in Signs has a cipher cut out of paper and layered onto the substrate. In LUV the hand gestures ASL for love and a paper layer shows the emoticon for love. Likewise Cross Your Fingers, Hope to AI is a message. We are entering a world of AI and the future is still unknown. Will it finally cure cancer or creative thinking? I use the gesture of crossed fingers wishing and luck as I pair it with the green and hexagon of Open AI. The easter eggs are a game, but for me they also comment on the complexity of transparency of our online spaces.

©Anna Reed

DG: In your artist statement, the description of your analog childhood sets an autobiographical tone for the work and the use of your body in your images reinforces this introspective quality. Tell us more about your choice to use yourself as a sort of ‘human stand-in’. What do you hope we draw from your self-examination?

AR: Outside of devices I had to trade in, I’ve kept every cell phone I’ve owned. They somehow felt too precious and personal to discard. A personal device has saved a friend’s life and holds the last message from a lost loved one. We all engage with technology and the online spaces in some way. Even when we choose not to, we are not immune to it’s engagement with the world around us. We are on the cusp of the 4IR the age of machine learning and cybernetics. I have my own unique fears and favorites so I know I can’t speak for everyone in my viewpoint. However I think we are all grappling with the speed of advancement, the need to keep tech that makes our lives better, and navigating the concerns of so much of the unknown. I hope we take time to consider how we want tech in our personal lives and in our society. I use my body as material and as a way to tell my personal story. It makes me examine how often I’m connected to devices, how it affects my physical body, and what thoughts I have afterward. It makes me examine my connections to other people. I now look for where I have agency in the world, and how I can use tech to make life better. I hope my work is a catalyst for others to consider their own relationship and agency with tech.

©Anna Reed

DG: In your writing, you pose a few questions that highlight the “place of uncertainty” from which you position this work—prompting viewers to consider their own relationship to technology. As you have dedicated your time and creative energy toward these inquiries, have any new insights opened up to you? Has anything become more or less certain?

AR: I’m as conflicted as ever! I started creating out of a place of questioning laced with anxiety. I am now more certain that there is more to know, and more than I can know. I am less certain if I can keep up with my questions. It is easy to just hit the accept button or feel that nefarious aspects are inevitable. It is easy of feel overwhelmed but we shouldn’t feel hopeless. I am certain that community and collaboration of people is the key. Tech is an amazing tool. We have become cyborgs and we rely on our devices and programs to navigate everything from directions to room temperature. Tech can make our lives and society better if we demand that it do so. Everything has 2 sides. No everything has many sides. It’s not a binary of yes or no, but how and for what. Datasets matter! All tech is not created equal and it’s not designed for or by everyone. You can still make it work for you. Yes your device is listening to you. That is alarming, but also has many applications ranging from grocery orders to assistance for the visually impaired. The more questions we ask and the more engaged we are, the more we can understand and make boundaries we choose.