SleepeelS at This Art Fair
At This Art Fair, Amsterdam 2021, digital persona SleepeelS (Mariah Blue’s alter ego) presents, Roses Rest, the debut album from musical duo Bots & Gas, consisting of Alexandros Papamarkou and Mariah Blue. As a digital entity, SleepeelS uses Youtube’s Creator interface as a medium. In her live performances and videos, she ‘lives’ through the digital devices of her audience via the Youtube platform. The album presentation was performative action by SleepeelS as the album’s promoter within the digital domain.
A limited edition of ten vinyl records is released and sold at the fair as art objects alongside other art multiples (merchandise) such as t-shirts, stickers and helium balloons.
In the booth, SleepeelS screens promotional videos while Mariah Blue and Alexandros Papamarkou are employed to work as her sales representatives at the art fair.
Each day, a live-stream performance of the album was presented by SleepeelS in the mezzanine and hosted the artist group, Bits & Pieces. This is where we also organized an improvised helium choir with other participating artists and art fair visitors.

Artist, Alexandros Papamarkou, performing as SleepeelS sales representative at this art fair.

Installation view with SleepeelS, this Art Fair Promotional videos, 2021
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLOi0j1d9kQV3-OW5VOdtQecbvR0sMvOM

Visitors enjoying the album, Roses Rest, with silent disco headphones.

Installation view with SleepeelS, promotional video Bots & Gas NFT and balloon, 2021

Installation view of Bots & Gas, Album booklet designed by Tariq Heijboer and Holographic Stickers with logo, designed by Mariah Blue, displayed with record player and headphones, 2021.

An art fair visitor performs SleepeelS by wearing her Be My Body, T-Shirt. The QR code links to this video by SleepeelS:

Artist, Alexandros Papamarkou leads an improvisational helium choir with artists and visitors at the art fair.

Installation view of vinyl albums backlit by led lights, Mariah Blue, 2021

Roses Rest, Record Display, Mariah Blue, 2021
Bots & Gas, Roses Rest
A newly formed cross-disciplinary music and artistic duo consisting of Alexandros Papamarkou and Mariah Blue. Roses Rest is the debut album released at This Art Fair 2021. The songs have come from channeled sources, automatic writing, Ouija board and text writing algorithm. Following the whims of channeled material and leaving songwriting to chance results in a musical blend of styles and genres. The record interweaves experimental pop, dance music, multi-layered (choral) a cappella singing, spoken word and even a ballad written by a nineteenth century ghost.

Cover Page of the foldout album booklet. Designed by Tariq Heijboer, 2021

Page 2 of the foldout album booklet. Designed by Tariq Heijboer, 2021

B&G interview with Charlotte ten Raa, Page 3 and 4 of the foldout album booklet. Designed by Tariq Heijboer, 2021

Poster (page 5) of the foldout booklet with example of automatic writing containing the lyrics to Peter's Song, from the album Roses Rest. Drawing by Mariah Blue, booklet designed by Tariq Heijboer, 2021
Fat Jack, 3:03 min, from the Roses Rest, full album, video playlist, 2021
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLOi0j1d9kQXtS1-CkrVjH34IW8Vu4TR6
Potluck, 2021, Gallery 17717, Seoul

Installation view Potluck, Gallery 17717, Seoul

Video stills Potluck
Potluck is a collaborative video by the artists. It was filmed on the Scottish Isle of Lewis where they shared a house, meals, and conversations. The video examines topics of entanglement, nature, technology, silent space and friendship in relation to a society striving for optimization.
All footage was filmed with mobile phones originally to document our trip together. The idea to make a video came later.

Installation view Potluck, with recent artist's publications, What thoughts think thoughts and What ties ties, ties, Gallery 17717, Seoul
What thoughts think thoughts
A riso printed book of images compiled by the artists, Mariah Blue, Kathrin Graf, Lana Murdochy, Younwon Sohn, and Amy Winstanley, designed by Alex Walker and published by Print Art Research Centre, Seoul.
The pages are bound with an elastic band, allowing the book to also function as a collection of separate prints. The cover displays an index and descriptions of the works written by the artists in English, Korean and German.




Looking For the Pixels
I zoom further into the screen of my smartphone, looking for the pixels. Every time I get closer I take a screenshot. My camera’s image processing algorithm blurs some parts of the image, sharpens other parts and it corrects the color. Rather than the photos becoming more abstract, the collaborative decision making between me and the camera creates strange and otherworldly forms.


A Bird A Fish, 2021, smartphone screenshots, 14.9 X 7.0 cm

InterObjects, 2021, smartphone screenshots, 14.9 X 7.0 cm
Palma Song Room Poetry
One of many found poems that I discovered during my residency at the Seoul Art Space Geumcheon in the spring of 2020. By using the Google Translate camera app throughout the neighborhood in Geumcheon-gu Seoul, I was able to translate street signs, building logos, and even the random patterns seen in tiles and skyscraper windows into poetry. These poems were sometimes dadaesque, nonsensical strings of words or syllables and sometimes revealed more profound word combinations, relating to mundane, philosophical or even spiritual subject matter. This work has been exhibited this year for the Digital Program, Flash Fictions: Alternative Networks with the London based, Photographer’s Gallery.

Palma Song Room Poetry, digital video, 3 minutes 24 seconds, https://youtu.be/f39TUxPqb0w

AIIIIIIIII, 2020, digital video, 1 minutes 49 seconds, https://youtu.be/0rVc3551VFw
AIIIIIIIIII
Uses Google Translator App. to instantly identify and translate text in images from a mobile camera. The translated texts are read out and recorded on a video. Google's Translator App. also translates skyscraper windows into incomprehensible and nearly unpronounceable texts. The work playfully challenges the capabilities of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and translation systems, exploring their creative possibilities when confronted to simple everyday provocations.
Virtual Walking
A sound performance and video installation at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, in April 2020.
Visitors listened to a spoken text and video soundscape through handmade paper cone speakers that created various sonic effects without the need for electronic sound equipment.
With these simple paper cone “technologies” the whispered performance was amplified and easily heard throughout the large exhibition hall. Echos and other sound distortions were created when I directed my voice against various acoustic focal points with a paper cone "microphone". This created a range of sound effects. Depending on where one was standing, the voice could be heard as if it were speaking very close to the ear and a quiet whispers echoed throughout the exhibition hall.

For the exhibition Virtual-Walking visitors were instructed to roll up a printed version of the exhibition text into two paper cones for the purpose of listening to the video installation.


Galaxies, 2020, looped videos screened on 2, 10” Samsung tablets


What ties ties, ties
A collection of essays by Mariah Blue, Kathrin Graf, Lana Murdochy, Younwon Sohn, Amy Winstanley
What ties ties, ties is a book created by five artists of different nationalities, backgrounds, ages, and gender identity. This book is tied by 'Doubt', a short story about questioning perceptions of the world by Scottish painter Amy Winstanley (b.1983), 'Call Us by Our Names', poems that are a collaboration between Mariah Blue (b.1977) and a machine learning algorithm, 'Housewarming, Dear Ghost Ants', an invitation essay about house, creature, and future scenery by Korean artist Younwon Sohn (b.1990), 'Tadpoles', a short coming of age story exploring friendship and imagination of young women by Scottish-Kurdish artist Lana Murdochy (b.1995), and 'Moving Matter', an essay on exploring the relationship between feelings and the design of surfaces by German sculptor Kathrin Graf (b.1984).

What ties ties, ties
2020
EN
18.5 x 10.5 cm, 136 pages, soft cover with riso print, 500 copies
Designed by Alex Walker
Published by Print Art Research Center, Seoul, South Korea
Printing & Binding by Printon Trükikoda
ISBN 979 -11-956458-7-9
€ 12













Call Us by Our Names is collaborative poetry written by a text predicting algorithm and curated by myself. The content for these poems is sourced from a trained dataset of eight million web pages.


Book launch What ties ties, ties at NEVERNEVERLAND, Amsterdam, 7 March 2020

Sonic Meditation: Vibrational Bodies
In a collaborative sound performance with artist Tina Reden, we discovered the sonic possibilities of ceramic coil pots as natural speakers — think of the sound produced by a sea shell when held to the ear. The varying shapes and sizes of the hand built coiled pots create varied tonalities depending on how they are interacted with. These ceramic coil pots were made using similar techniques to those used since the stone age. We imagine alternative uses for technologies and play with the distinctions between hi and low tech by plugging in these stone age pottery vessels and using them as musical instruments.







Sonic Meditation and Vibrational Bodies, 2019
A collaborative performance with Tina Reden, Zone2Source, Amsterdam
SleepeelS
Fictional persona, SleepeelS, uses Youtube’s Creator interface as a medium. In her live performances, she co-opts the digital devices of her audience through the Youtube platform. A cacophony of echoes can be heard in the room as phones playback her performance at differing stream rates. These echos are fed back into her computer mic and broadcasted again, creating a sonic feedback loop. Eventually all speech is drowned out by the intensifying reverb.
The Youtube algorithm is designed to selectively choose extreme content in order to captivate the attention of its audience. A feedback loop occurs between viewer and algorithm where ideologies become polarized in a self-fulfilling echo chamber of ideas. SleepeelS hopes to someday be an influencer of the Youtube algorithm.

SleepeelS youtube channel livestream performance, broadcasted on multiple handheld devices during Torpor/A Bliss/A Slump, Staircase exhibition May 2019. https://youtu.be/Aq1knyuTTLM |

RT/ActivTrak, 2019, 3:21 min
In this video, a worker surveillance algorithm mines SleepeelS' employee data, takes random screenshots of her online activity, and tracks her digital activities.


Silicon Valley Doomsday, 2019, Youtube video, screened for Festival of Choices, Zone2Source, Amsterdam

Paradoxical Mountain, 2019, 3:23 min
My friend and colleague Younwon Sohn shot the original footage for this video.

Sleepeelssleepeelssleepeels, 2020, reversed sound recording, 0:09 min
SleepeelS is a phonetic palindrome, is sounds the same played backwards as it does forwards.

Domestic Work Algorithm
These works examine the exploitative relationships between labor and digital platforms. I use my employee work data to create digital tapestries.This data is collected from my “day job” with the domestic labor platform Helpling, a digital platform described as “Uber for housekeepers.” The tapestries are created by a similarly exploitative online platform which outsources weaving to the lowest bidder.

Helpling Grrrl, 2018, video, 0:34 min
The Helpling house cleaners platform logo has been manipulated in video editing software and gains her own voice.

Digital weaving of work data from contracted cleaning work with Helpling™ domestic help platform

Tapeworms Mosaic (hand embroidery detail), 2018, 50 x 150 cm, digital weaving

Domestic Work Algorithm and Tapeworms Mosaic, 2018, 50 x 150 cm, digital weaving

Algorithmic Drawings
Digital drawings can be made using the language of code. Anything can be used as data and therefor programmed into a drawing.
Symbols are hand drawn in repetitions following an algorithmic equation. The equation is created using dice. The dice choose which symbols will be used within the drawings, how many times they will be repeated, what order, and the colors which are used. The drawings can be hand replicated once an equation is formulated.

Kraken, Digital representation of cryptocurrency trading from October 2017 to January 2018, Dimensions variable

Kraken and Domestic Work, 2018, Dimensions variable
Digital representations of cryptocurrency trading and Helpling labour programmed in Java

Domestic Work Algorithm Java Code, 2018, Dimensions Variable
Java program using data from my work with the online house cleaners platform Helpling.

Algorithmic Drawing, 2017, colored pencil on paper 150 x 125 cm
Part of a series of drawings created using imaginary symbols drawn in repetitions according to an equation created by dice throwing.

Performed Algorithmic Drawings, 2017, Dimensions variable
Documentation of Performance at De Punt, Amsterdam

