Krista Kim is a contemporary artist based in New York and Toronto. Krista is the founder of the Techism movement in 2014, promoting the confluence of art and technology, and technological innovation as a medium to further the development of digital humanism. She believes that artists must be seated at the vanguard of technological innovation in order to contribute to the creation of future culture during this pivotal period of technological innovation, adaptation and disruption. In her Digital Consciousness series, Krista gathers digital images of LED lights, and manipulates them using multiple software to create her artwork, a unique technique that she has developed since 2012. As a painter, she was an abstract expressionist, and she uses the same artistic approach to create her digital artwork.
Krista is interested in the disruptive and interpersonal and social effects of digital technology, as a force of distraction and segregation of people based on similar interests and likes though algorithms on social media. She seeks to communicate a transcendent, meditative experience for the viewer in digital visual language, which she describes as digital consciousness.
Krista has lived in Seoul, Tokyo and Singapore. She earned her Masters of Arts Fine Arts from La Salle College of the Arts / Goldsmiths College UK in 2014. She completed her undergraduate studies in Political Science at the University of Toronto.
Techism
Kim created the art movement of techism in 2014, involving technological innovation with the creation of art. In her manifesto, Krista Kim, explains that her movement is not in opposition to older art practices, because it is "an artist’s expression drawn from the cross-pollination of contemporary tools: intelligent software and digital media."
The complete Techism Manifesto reads:
"Techism is a movement that reconciles technological innovation with the creation of art. Techism understands innovation, be it technological or philosophical, as a medium in and of itself. For this reason, Techism does not mean how it sounds. It does not put technology before art but rather, sees art and technology as companions meeting the next wave of human expression – digital humanism. We are the masters of technology, and creating art is the expression of digital humanism.
What is digital human existence, and what is the beauty in it?
Many traditional practices of artisanship have remained, and they will continue to do so. Techism is not a movement that stands in opposition to older practices. Nor does it assert brusque claims that the old will be swept away with the new. Artists can decide when and which practices to adopt and discard with each phase of creation.
In the age of Cognitive Computing, technology will continue to disrupt and revolutionise industries in services, manufacturing, healthcare, media and education, and will continue to revolutionise creative platforms.
Tech + Art is in the creative platform. Art is no longer limited to a frame on a wall. Art is becoming ever more an interactive practice. Collaboration has always enabled art’s creation. Collaboration materializes consciousness. Art is consciousness. Techism is an appeal and return to that consciousness, the consciousness of art as shared, as thing, as idea and as experience.
Intelligent software allows the artist to become multifaceted and an entrepreneur. It's about being yourself and finding what fits and making, customising consumables yourself, or in collaboration because you can.
Art is experiential, the phenomenal. We, the viewer participate, and discern for ourselves, what we behold.
Techism is an artist’s expression drawn from the cross-pollination of contemporary tools: intelligent software and digital media."