Statement

My work is fundamentally concerned with the complex relationship between society and its technologies. Trained first as a scientist and only recently as an artist, my practice represents an uneasy balance of eager technological optimism, analytical processes, deep-rooted skepticism and intuitive engagement. Much of this practice is inspired by the interconnectivities — visible and invisible — present in the modern urban landscape. I am energized by the diversity of human expression that continuously activates our vast communication networks. I am awed by the scale and varied histories of the built environment and urban infrastructure. As technologists make daily promises to improve our lives by uniting these physical and digital worlds, I attempt to make work that examines the practical implications of our increasingly networked lifestyles. Primary to this task is an exploration of the ways we imagine and represent ourselves before (potentially massive) audiences and the ways we navigate and abide in public space. Thus, architecture and place figure heavily into my often site-specific practice. With these interests at heart, large-scale video projections allow me to create works that fuse existing physical spaces with more ephemeral digital elements, resulting in revelatory and sometimes disorienting forms.

Bio

Christopher Baker is an artist whose work engages the rich collection of social, technological and ideological networks present in the urban landscape. He creates artifacts and situations that reveal and generate relationships within and between these networks. Christopher’s work has been presented in festivals, galleries and museums in the US including The Soap Factory (Minneapolis), the Plains Art Museum (Fargo, ND), the Center for Book Art (New York, NY), and the Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, NY), and internationally in venues including, Laboral (Gijon, Spain), Museum of Communication (Bern, Switzerland), Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain (Luxembourg), Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina (Florence, Italy), as well as venues in France, Finland, Hungary, Denmark, Australia, the UK and Canada. Christopher’s work has recently been seen in ID Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, Exposure, MAS CONTEXT, and the critically acclaimed Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design series. Since completing a Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Media Arts at the University of Minnesota, Baker has held visiting artist positions at Kitchen Budapest, an experimental media lab in Hungary, and Minneapolis college of Art and Design. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Art and Technology Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Other Networks

Find a list of my networks here.