i am
a generative artist, an edible mushroom hunter, a firm believer in science, a constant practitioner of unconditional friendliness, a dedicated proponent of anti-racism, a critic of silicon valley, a ritual worshiper of nature, a fervent feminist, an active artivist, a free dive fanatic and an emphatic lover of animals.
about the artist...
cari ann shim sham* is a wild artist who goes in all directions, circling with the morphic field to move bodies into healing states, walking in the forests to commune with nature as an edible mushroom hunter and free diving in the Bahamas for interspecies collaboration via underwater dancing with spotted dolphins. Her practice explores the morphic field, bodily circular movement's relationship to magic, human interactions with technology, performative inflatable sculpture as empathy generators, self portraiture as critique, the power of asking questions and the possibilities of improvisation and experimentation to liberate dance. She often works in the nude.
Cutting her teeth in lala land, she choreographed for theater, musical theater, operas, toured her agit prop company Bitch Co. performing for Cirque du Soleil’s opening party for “O” at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, the Democratic Convention in Santa Monica, and in the underground art scene at Cannibal Flower and the White Rabbit in the late 90’s. She jumped deep into her computer and cameras to acquire her digital prowess and fell into filmmaking with her attention to rhythm and movement. She ended up cutting feature films, shooting music videos and commercials, having her own run as a filmmaker with her viral sensation Are You For Real? which launched her dance film career with her short doc SAND qualifying for an Academy award nomination. She served as an associate producer and editor for One Day on Earth, the largest participatory documentary shot in every country of the world on the same day, 10.10.10, winning the Vimeo Social Change Award and Record Breakers Largest World Premiere Award.
Four of cari ann’s short dance films, SAND, Chicken Boy, Powder and Are You For Real were acquired and distributed by the Routledge Performance Archive for academic research. Her film Bleu is honored to be included in the 20 year showcase for the Sans Soucci film festival touring internationally for 2023-24 and her recent zoom dance film ‘pandemic statements’ was exhibited at the 2022 Amerman Symposium for Arts & Technology.
Her cinematic awards include Best VR from NYC Indie Film Fest 2018 & Best VR from Samsung VR Gallery 2018 for Directing “The Parksville Murders”, an episodic virtual reality horror opera, Best Director from the First Glance Film Festival & Best Short Doc from St. Louis & Oxford Film Festivals for her short dance film SAND along with a Telly Award for Cinematography and a Telly Award for Music Video for My First Big Break which she choreographed and assistant directed.
An avid burning man attendee, shim sham* attended 9 burns over the period of 1998-2009, leading an infamous banana flash mob, building the fun cult camp and birthday cake art car, residing and cooking for camp contact in her final years.
In 2015 she moved to NYC for a job as dance & technology professor at Tisch Dance NYU, where she began her journey into code, generative art and interactive technologies, and developed her ‘Interactions with technology’ course which uses processing as an introduction for dancers to learn to work interactively with code.
Known for her award winning films, XR immersive interactive digital inflatable installation exhibits, and video art she has toured solo and with dance theater companies internationally including Roussève | Reality, Lionel Popkin, and Viver Brasil. Her live work and video art has shown at notable venues such as Jacob's Pillow, BAM, PS 21, Peak Performances, the Joyce Soho The Krannert Center, Clarice Smith Art Center, Danspace in NYC, Dance Place, DC, REDCAT Los Angeles.
Her immersive, interactive, inflatable XR and VR artwork & research has exhibited at the Future of Storytelling onStaten Island, the Samsung Developers Conference: Samsung VR An Evening in 360 in SF, the CHI Conference in Montreal, the VR Haunted Carnival at the Salem Horror Fest and the Imagine Festival at Earth Dance.
She was invited by the Trisha Brown Company to be the first video artist to remount the Shiner for Set and Reset/Reset based on the original design by Robert Rauschenberg and Beverly Emmons in 1983. Her interactive mapping and live feed video art is at the heart of the feature documentary on Loïe Fuller in Obsessed with Light, 2023 screened at Lincoln Center and touring film festivals and her 20 year collaboration as video artist and director of photography for David Roussève | Reality was highlighted with a two page spread in the ‘Dynamic Duo’ article in January 2024 by Dance Magazine.
Her inflatable empathy generator project shimmer the singing sea anemone has exhibited with the Every Woman Biennial, Northeastern University, Resistor NYC and 3 years with Summer on the Hudson Songs of the Sea by Opera on Tap continuing to spawn new anemones and fans alike. At the end of 2023 her generative art project ‘body landscapes’ was featured by fx(hash) in an fx(press) interview, collected by the Mud Foundation and exhibited by the Loop Art Critique. Her generative artwork ‘window’ was exhibited by Li Tang Gallery, & Laguna Gallery and her archival GIF of her experimental dance score warning sirens ‘circling’ was exhibited by NFT Bali, Superlative Gallery. Her inflatable shimmer small anemones performed for the Every Woman Biennial, the largest exhibition of women and non-binary artists, at La MaMa Galleria in March of 2024 and her ‘dance prompts <dance jam>’ was beta tested at the Artificial environments/environmental Intelligence Festival at Columbia Barnard in the Movement Lab in February of 2024.
For three decades she curated, programmed, directed and produced film, dance and music festivals around the world, with commitment to free submission for the artist. She was recently invited to curate for objkt.one, the largest digital market on the tezos blockchain and for the generative art marketplace fx(hash) for the Antidote festival in the metaverse. She developed an AI curator with bias towards equity, diversity and inclusion for “This Show is Curated by a Machine 🤖” with IV and joey zaza for the Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art, mowna.org, an online digital museum that pays its artists, now in its fourth year and 12th exhibition founded in 2020 at the height of the pandemic with partner joey zaza. Currently she is investigating blockchain GIF archival of the body and performance in Web3 and a participatory development and community onboarding project for an open source AI choreographer biased towards inclusive and accessible movement.
As a breast cancer survivor that was diagnosed on the day of the covid NYC shut down she moves in the words of Mary Oliver, and reminds you to enjoy your one ’wild and precious life’.
Thanks for popping by, stay wild…
❤ shimmy
