BIO

Gabrielle Latessa Ortiz is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work began in the late ’80s as a painter after moving to France. Abandoning the solitude of painting, and moving back to NYC in the early 90s, she began working collaboratively with other artists in Williamsburg, Brooklyn forming Lalalandia Entertainment Research Corp. This collaboration involved creating site-specific omni-sensorial environments in warehouse spaces and storefronts using found materials, technology, water, sound, smells, food, organics, lighting, and music, all activated by participants at monthly or weekly “events”.

In the mid-’90s Gabrielle began working with homemade analog videotape loops, mixers, props, projectors, and live cameras in a collaboration known as OVNI. OVNI worked with immersive video projection as live architecture, creating real-time visual environments. This performance style of live video mixing was often in conjunction with musicians and dancers and took place in theaters, warehouses, storefronts, nightclubs and underground events, mostly outside of the art-world/gallery context. These collaborations evolved into various configurations, such are eye>>cue productions, and Ongolia. Gabrielle’s work in the 90’s culminated in an large scale dining installation at the infamous “Quiet” event produced by Josh Harris of Pseudo.com.

In the 90’s, glitch and interference were a normal part of working with live video in performance and installation. Computer and internet speeds were painfully slow, hard drives and memory had minimal space, and wireless did not exist. As a creator, Gabrielle chose to embrace the low resolution and interference, rather than fight it. Error, disturbance, and glitch became part of her aesthetic, and has informed her work ever since.

Gabrielle’s new work continues to explore the intersection of technological and organic systems. She uses sources she shoots on her cameras, mostly focusing on the natural world and urban environment. Working in a non-linear language of visual loops and fragments, she explores the interplay of natural and computer generated movement. Using precise digital conditions, parameters and audio triggers, she sets in motion self-generating videos that embrace themes of randomness, interference, and entropy. Her process mirrors the tension between the natural world and our hyper-designed, high-tech spaces.