Matthew Mosher
Tempe, AZ
Residency: May-June 2017
Project Description
During my residency at Sculpture Space I developed a new body of work that centered on visualizing gun violence data in three-dimensional forms. The first piece involved plaster casting over 15,000 9mm cartridges, one for each homicide victim in 2016. I also made an internet enabled kinetic machine that dispenses these bullets as shootings are reported in 2017. The second work depicted a map of the United States based on the locations of mass murders. I used plaster cast Glock 17s to create reflective mandalas for each shooting, in which the number of guns corresponds to the number of casualties. The data for both these pieces comes from gunviolencearchive.org. I created these works to help facilitate discussions of gun violence by visualizing raw data. The works themselves are neither for gun control nor for second amendment rights, but hope to foster dialog between both sides of the debate.
A residency at Sculpture Space not only provided me with the time and space to pursue a new body of work, but also gave me the confidence that I had the skill and focus to vigorously continue my art practice back home. I think this faith in my own abilities is the most important thing that I got out of my residency; that I can go into my studio with a whole new idea and make a successful series of artworks.
About the Artist
Boston native Matthew Mosher is an intermedia artist and mixed methods research professor who creates embodied experiential systems. He received his BFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006 and his MFA in Intermedia from Arizona State University in 2012. While in Phoenix, Arizona he co-founded the non-profit [nueBOX] residency program for emerging performance and installation artists. Currently, he is an assistant professor of digital media specializing in interaction design at the University of Central Florida. Mosher exhibits his work across the United States, and internationally in India, China, and the Netherlands. His research is published in the ACM Computer-Human Interaction, Tangible Embodied Interaction, and New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference proceedings. His public installations, dynamic performances, and experiential systems bridge the physical and digital worlds by mixing new media, sensing technology, relational aesthetics, computer programming, collaborative practice, and traditional sculpture processes. When taking a break from teaching and research, he enjoys observational astronomy, dispersed camping, and jewelry design.