Jeffrey Yoo Warren

Together Shovel

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

In 2023, I looked in the stereograph collections of the Library of Congress as part of my residency, and suddenly found a photograph that I recognized – of a group of Korean people shoveling together with a single shovel – a Together Shovel. It was a much clearer image than what I’d seen in the past! And dated to 1904, to the construction of a post office.

I had started researching what I’ve been calling the Together Shovel over a year ago, building a replica from a series of old photos I’d found, and learning to collectively shovel with others at Movement Education Outdoors. As a part of the Bburi Roots collective show, I installed the reconstructed Together Shovel in the window of the AS220 Aborn Gallery in Providence, along with two other pieces which offer a glimpse into ancestral moments through virtual reconstructions.

This new photograph included amazing moments like someone eating lunch in a partially completed hanok - offering a detailed glimpse into another deep interest of mine: traditional Korean joinery. And the delighted expression of the kid watching the shoveling is joyful to see.

The stereogram can be found at: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003666476/

Seeing Lost Enclaves

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Relational reconstructions of erased historic neighborhoods of color is a project by Jeffrey Yoo Warren as part of the 2023 Innovator in Residence Program at the Library of Congress.

Click here to read more about this project.

Mechanism for healing oneself with water

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0500

“Mechanism for healing oneself with water,” originally imagined for my mother, takes inspiration from 자격루 / jagyeongnu, a self-striking water clock made by Jang Yeong-sil in 1434. It was part of a group show with the Korean American Artist Collective on September 9, 2023 in Washington, DC. It is dedicated to fellow Korean Americans, and to my mother.

Why do I create replicas? Or incorporate six hundred year old water clocks into my work? I am cultivating a kind of metabolism; decomposing the harms, the pain, and the exhaustion which accompany my process of re-connection, into nutrients for something new. When a tiny shard of knowledge makes it through, like a dandelion seed in the archives, I suspect it contains the knowledge to reconstruct the whole. I’m less interested in the whole mechanism or artifact – more the meanings encoded within.

Could this object have had a healing purpose for our ancestors, and would it still work for us today? What might it take to reactivate it? Could it be the motive force of our own bodies, out here in the diaspora? What does it mean for water to be the carrier of both time and space for healing?

Led by these questions, I imagined an object which is brought to life by an amount of water which you can lift, and which enables you to create an amount of space and time in which you can both forgive and love oneself.

(This work incorporates a ceramic vessel crafted by Joyce Wu)

Hanok Re-existencia

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0500

What can we learn about the worlds of our ancestors, and the textures and shapes of the lives they lived? Are their hopes and dreams still evident in the clues we find in archives and artifacts, despite decades or centuries of colonial distortion?

Since 2022, I have immersed myself in the woodworking knowledge of my ancestors, inspired by a learning journey about the home where my family lived in Hosan, on the Gohung peninsula in Korea. A 한옥 / hanok is a traditional Korean home, crafted from pine beams, clay plaster walls and paper windows and doors. My mother’s memories of that home, and the world she was part of, have led me to seek out and take up the skills and techniques of hanok construction, while reworking years of my own woodworking experiences. (And inspired as always by the re-existencia work of Kazakh artists Aisha Jandosova and Aida Issakhankyzy, the YA literature of Linda Sue Park.)

Coined by Adolfo Albán Achinte and described by Madina Tlostanova, re-existencia is “an active reworking of odors, tastes, colors and sounds of his/her ancestors and remaking of systematically negated forms of interactions with the world, of being and perception… a sensual response of resistance… in defiance to coloniality.”

My diasporic research journey has taken me through archives and stereographs, YouTube and Seoul AirBNBs, drawings and prototypes. I’ve learned to wield a chainsaw and sharpen a handplane. I’ve learned the Korean vocabulary of hanok components, and the ceremonies to protect its inhabitants.

I’m slowly building larger and larger hanoks, and beginning to build them with other Korean diasporic people. It is my dream to build a full size hanok which can be a space of peace and belonging for Korean people seeking re-connection, and to teach hanok construction as a part of my woodworking practice.

As I work towards that goal, I have begun to incorporate hanok timber joinery into my furniture making. Please reach out (or stay tuned on my Instagram) to learn more.

Ancestral Memory Enclaves: Diasporic memory and relational reconstruction

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 -0400

In this workshop series, using “memory objects” – photos from personal archives of one’s family, chosen family, and/or historical records – as windows into ancestral moments, participants employ digital tools to speculatively re-create the space – and the feeling – around the view visible in each photo. Inspired by the re-existencia work of Kazakh artists Aisha Jandosova and Aida Issakhankyzy, the YA literature of Linda Sue Park, and the speculative fiction of Octavia Butler’s Patternmaster series, we talk through different approaches to remembering and being in relationship with ancestral stories – through craft, through narrative, through sensory practices and through spatial reconstruction – and their meanings to those of us with minoritized or diasporic identities seeking re-connection or re-unification.

Using relational reconstruction techniques developed in the Seeing Providence Chinatown project, each participant builds a virtual 3D space of care, based on a photo of their choosing, within an environment hosted on Mozilla Hubs.

Ancestral Memory Enclaves is facilitated by Jeffrey Yoo Warren and was first presented as part of CultureHub’s Re-Fest 2022 in partnership with AS220. Brandi Kinard assisted in facilitating Workshop 2. Work on multisensory reconstruction continues in collaboration with Ann Chen.

CultureHub Oct 2022 residency

At the end of October 2022, Ann Chen and I hosted a week-long series of workshops at CultureHub in NYC, including an ancestral memory enclave workshop, while incorporating mask-making, speculative sound, and an in-person full-size projection space to the project. By embedding the sounds and VR scenes into headsets within the masks we crafted, each mask became a “memory portal” to access and experience that moment. Thanks again to Brandi Kinard for assistant-facilitating.

Seeing Providence Chinatown

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 00:00:00 -0400

Seeing Providence Chinatown is a project using archival photography and maps to build an immersive digital 3D model of historic downtown Providence Chinatown. The process of reconstructing the neighborhood’s building exteriors and streets will weave together and interlink the relatively few images remaining of this once-vibrant enclave, of which almost no trace remains today.

Click here to read more about this project.

Taller Leñateros Zine

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0500

Taller Leñateros is a collective publishing house operated by contemporary Maya artists in Chiapas, Mexico. With great love and gratitude for this work to preserve their ancestral knowledge, we have made a zine to celebrate and appreciate their story and work.

Aisha Jandosova and I printed these using Riso@Home on a laser printer and are offering copies for $5-10 (pay what you can) each in either Spanish or English, purchase by Venmo to @unterbahn; all proceeds go to Taller Leñateros.

In our Voces Mayores art-making and storytelling workshops, Aisha Jandosova and I were inspired by their work to preserve & expand indigenous literature and voices by “publishing the first books written, illustrated, printed, and bound by the Maya community in over 400 years.”

In January 2021, we spent time making and reading these zines on Zoom with seniors in the Foster Grandparents program in the Providence area, where we delivered art-making kits!

Box microscopes

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500

Imagining possible pasts is as important as possible futures. It requires rethinking how the world looks, feels, and with whom it is in conversation. As part of my series on Instruments for Multiple Worlds and my work on Predecessor Sciences, I’ve been building a series of microscopes that unmake the embodied material and visual ideas of eurocentric masculine science by finding among traditions that resonate with my own identity. These are photos of my first completed prototype.

This year, I started reading about the history of microscopes, and while there was mention of “water-filled” microscopes “in ancient China,” English-language accounts spoke of these in vague, almost mythological terms. Maybe because the history is actually lost – intentionally or not – or because it is inaccessible to English-language scholars. Where are those records, and who were those people? What were their lives like?

Imagining and rebuilding a future that has more space for non-dominant cultures requires more than theory, and more than action; Instruments for Multiple Worlds is a future world-building project as much as it is a prototyping of lost pasts. It’s this reasoning that inspires me to craft artifacts which support ancestral knowledge, and which nourish creativity and joy.

I’m now working on an illustrated essay about this series of microscopes, their acupuncture needle joysticks which enable physical contact with the microcosmos, and the shaping of a visual, material, and sensory experience in micro-narrative work.

I’m open to limited commissions/inquiries for borrowing or purchasing one of these microscopes, in exchange for barter or funds depending on your situation.

I’m grateful to be building ideas among ppl like Sadie Prego/@djespiral (Anti-Assimilation), Ananda Gabo (Ancestral Science) and inspired by so many more; worldmaker Aisha Jandosova who I work with daily, Dr Max Liboiron who asks students to imagine a feminist microscope, Sandra Harding on successor sciences, afrotectopia for exploring and imagining futures and pasts.

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren

Preciousness and Power

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:00:00 -0400

A video essay incorporating microscopic footage of a 皮蛋 (pine-patterned egg) being opened, addressing such topics as anti-assimilation in visual media and the scientific gaze, intimacy and intangible ideas of memory and nostalgia, culminating in a surprising phenomena from within the egg. Recorded during lockdown.

Available for viewing on request.

Instruments for multiple worlds

Tue, 05 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In early 2020, I’ve begun a collection of projects which prototype culturally situated knowledge production in a world where dominant culture collapses all meanings into one lineage (see Anti-Assimilation, esp. Sadie Prego).

Each instrument explores ways of listening, knowing, and “tuning into” that build on non-eurocentric, non-masculine histories, and so may not speak to all audiences. These are not scientific instruments, but they do help people produce knowledge.

Exploring or examining - those are scientific or even colonial terms. Categorizing, analyzing, “learning the science behind” something.

Instead these instruments invite intimacy with hidden landscapes, or shared secrets hiding in plain sight – like a fourth color, or an untranslatable word.

Projects

As these projects progress, I’ll continue posting here with more about each instrument:

Porcelain spectrometer - the first in the collection, this exploration of a possible past imagines an artifact of an alternative origin story, a spectrometer in the tradition of Joseon period Korean inkwells.
Sky lanterns - coming soon
Hot Water Fishing - coming soon
1000周 / 1000hz egg - coming soon

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren

Microscopic Cyanotypes

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 -0500

As I’ve been making and using DIY microscopes for some years, I was curious to try taking an analog photograph of a microscopic sample. I have been testing a way to produce a cyanotype directly from a microscopic slide using a UV laser and a small lens, and have been able to produce small snapshots of cells and insect parts in just a few minutes.

This type of microscopic photography requires no electronics and results in a print. It will be an interactive part of AS220 Industries Drink and Ink event in May 2020, where I will be Artist in Residence.

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren (some with Public Lab)

WebJack audio sensor communication

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 -0500

WebJack is a way of connecting a web page to a sensor or devices using a 1970s-era audio modem protocol to enable two-way communication. It sends a series of audio tones back and forth between your browser and an Arduino microcontroller. WebJack invites those who write webpages (or p5js sketches) to interact with the physical world through a unique audio-based system.

Connecting sensors and reading data from them remains a frustrating experience for many, and one which often requires more expensive Bluetooth or WiFi systems, browser plugins, or special apps. WebJack eases the work to connect sensors, motors, or other electronic devices to your computer or phone by sending signals “out loud” – or over a headphone cable – and lets you focus on interesting interactive and creative work.

Because the communication is audio-based, recordings of data work just as well as live audio. This means data, or commands (such as to activate a set of motors in a specific sequence) can be recorded as sound files, or embedded in videos.

I led the design of this kit as Director of Research at Public Lab, and worked with the talented Richard Meister, who wrote the software interface as part of his Google Summer of Code fellowship program.

p5js

As new strategies emerge to engage newcomers, both the p5js and Public Lab communities have worked to create inclusive spaces which center historically excluded groups and challenge ingrained conceptions of “who can do tech and/or science.” While social practices such as events, workshops, and well-written online materials that decenter jargon can provide a crucial foundation for this work, anyone who’s taught an Arduino workshop knows that there are dozens of small but significant barriers, from installing drivers to selecting serial baud rates. WebJack is about prototyping the kind of plug-and-play interface that can help us focus on the kinds of more compelling problems and ideas that come from a more diverse community with wide ranging interests and experiences.

WebJack can sidestep many of the barriers that come with the basic Arduino/computer setup, connecting to a basic JavaScript interface, as well as to Scratch or any audio-capable program such as Max/MSP or Pure Data using an audio modem protocol. This interoperability invites participation by artists, musicians, and, at Public Lab, community scientists and activists. The recently created p5js integration, now featured as a standard p5js example, is especially promising, because the p5js community has done a great deal to address not only technical barriers, but inclusivity and diversity. WebJack is now installed by default on all Public Lab’s Arduino-based sensor kits, as featured in the Fall 2019 issue of Make Magazine.

Beyond this, WebJack opens up new possibilities such as controlling an Arduino from drum pads, in a voicemail message, or using a tape recorder, as well as embedding interactive text in a book or a waterproof container, while remaining accessible on a webpage with any smartphone. It explores how changing the basic infrastructure of hardware projects to decenter mainstream conceptions of technical virtuosity can open up space for powerful new ideas and applications from a broader community.

Papercraft spectrometer

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 -0500

The Papercraft Spectrometer is a DIY kit which shifts the problem space of spectrometry into the realm of papercraft, changing both the circle of possible contributors to this technology and the meaning and purpose of the tool, reflecting as it does the values, identities, and knowledge of those who help to design and build it in social, cultural, economic, and epistemological terms.

I led the development of this open source kit as Director of Research at Public Lab, and an estimated 80,000 kits have been distributed around the world since its first version in 2012.

The kit was included as a cut-out insert in issue 70 of Make Magazine, was a finalist for the Designs of the Year 2014 at the Design Museum in London, and was featured in the December issue of the Economist in 2017. It incorporated and built upon the open sourced contributions of hundreds of people, from blog posts by the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India, to the 1600 backers of the Kickstarter project we launched the first version with in 2012.

Using scissors, the design can be cut from a paper template which may be printed on cardstock; the interior is darkened due to a large square of black ink on the reverse side. The prism, or diffraction grating, which bends light into a rainbow, can be made by cutting a slice of a DVD-R and taping it to the provided window.

Basic instructions for both assembly and calibration are printed on the device itself, inspired by the Antikytheros device, an example of a technology which “explains itself to you.”

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren & Public Lab contributors

Infragram cameras

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Infragram is a DIY project to modify digital cameras to take infrared photos, in order to understand plant health. Using https://infragram.org, photos taken with an Infragram camera can be processed to highlight photosynthetic productivity.

I led the development of this kit as Director of Research at Public Lab, and thousands of Infragram kits have been distributed around the world since it’s first version in 2013.

The kit was featured in Popular Mechanics, and issue 70 of Make Magazine in 2019.

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren & Public Lab contributors

Community Microscope

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

The Community Microscope Kit, which I led development on at Public Lab, is an affordable microscope made from everyday materials, including a webcam, bolts, and rubber bands. It can be assembled in about 30 minutes and was originally designed to photograph silica particles, a form of air pollution from frac sand mining. The microscope is powerful enough to photograph 10 micron air pollution particles.

By lowering the barrier to getting a microscope, this kit helps make microscopic photography a tool for collecting otherwise invisible environmental evidence in visual form. While building your own microscope isn’t necessary to make use of one, it’s far more affordable, and encourages remixing and adaptation, and encourages divergent designs and uses.

Microbrews

MICROBREWS is a series of social events hosted at bars (or coffee shops) where people can use microscopes while they talk and hang out in an informal setting. I have hosted MICROBREWS in Providence, Rhode Island (at AS220 Industries), Valdivia, Chile, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, and it’s remarkable how different these events are from a more formal workshop or class. Contact me to talk about hosting your own MICROBREWS, and feel free to use the posters available here.

The Community Microscope is based on the open source LifePatch microscope, the Hackteria microscope, the OpenFlexure Microscope, and Max Liboiron’s work at CLEAR (#13503), among other sources.

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren & Public Lab contributors

Illustration

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve done illustration as a part of my practice for my whole career, but in recent years I’ve been asked to do illustration work with and for others as well.

The above drawing was made in collaboration with Caroline Woolard in 2016 just after the US elections, and represents a range of works, ideas, and aspirations reflected in her work. It is entitled Solidarity Economy and was exhibited at the Queens Museum in New York and Art Center Nabi in Seoul, Korea.

Public Lab

In my time at Public Lab, I produced many of the drawings and illustrations featured on Public Lab gear, such as totes, stickers, t-shirts, and mugs.

The Open Hardware Association, of which I am a board member, invited me to develop an illustration for the Open Hardware Certification program, and the following was unveiled at the Open Hardware Summit in 2019.

The Design Studio for Social Intervention asked me to contribute the following drawing for one of their Social Emergency Response Center events in 2019.

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren (some with Public Lab)

Porcelain spectrometer

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400

This project builds on the Papercraft Spectrometer and is part of the Instruments for Multiple Worlds series

Curious about the origins of the microscope, I found that histories of scientific instruments often center disproportionally on the lives of men from the European Enlightmenment. I found that several references to much older “water microscopes” in ancient China, but the inventors, primary sources, dates, and other details were omitted. I know that these histories may be lost, untranslated, or inaccurate, but they are also treated differently, as mythology or mysticism, though of course the origins of western science are also mixed up in alchemy, theology, and mysogyny.

In his 1940 story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Jorge Luis Borges writes of a form of speculative archaeology in which artifacts are recovered from civilizations that did not exist. Reading this, I was inspired to “recover” and remake scientific instruments that might have existed, and especially ones that might not be recognized by contemporary scientists.

Modeled on Joeseon period Korean ceramic inkpots, this desktop spectrometer is made of porcelain and lined with felt. Samples are introduced in the top funnel, and the “eyes” are pointed towards a light source such as a fire, or the sun. By looking into the square hole, you can see the spectrum of light passing through the sample you’re examining, next to a “blank” sample for comparison.

The spectrometer, still incomplete, requires a diffraction grating that could have come from contemporary materials; I’ve considered using iridescent feathers, fish skin, beetle carapaces, or even the surface of bubble, but have yet to make a final decision.

See a prototype below which demonstrates the comparison of 2 samples in a similar manner: