Dominick Rivers
Indiana University
Dominick Rivers is an M.F.A. candidate and Associate Instructor in the Digital Art program at Indiana University. By integrating technically outdated forms, he uses video work, framed by larger installations, to examine the popular media we use to capture and sentimentalize memory. His work explores the commercialized conflicts between the saturation of global mass media and the values and art forms of working-class America. With the use of distant, yet familiar, formal language, imagery, construction, equipment and technology, his work encapsulates the notion of the uncanny. Dominick, 2019 recipient of the Ramavarapu Vijayalakshmi Music Memorial & Charitable Trust Award, is a multi-instrumentalist who writes, records, and produces all of the soundscapes and musical accompaniments to his work.
Kukamunga
Kukamunga!
Kukamunga! is a fully integrated multimedia installation, centered around a simple idea: the tangible nostalgia of a video tape. The project started merely as an exploration of what formal elements are both admired and satirized in the antiquated VHS format. As a standalone video work or as the focal point of the installation capsule, the tape serves as a physical talisman of the antiquated, endearing, and often ridiculous culture of early children’s media. The tape case design and distribution method were executed to conflict drastically with today’s aesthetic and commercial ideas of the child as a consumer of mass media.
