ARTIST STATEMENT

On my screen I see a forest. If the forest is felled, the image will remain. The digital image of these trees becomes an afterlife – the landscape embalmed, documented, preserved. Through my studio practice I seek to answer the question of what gets lost when we memorialize the natural world through digital media and artificial replication. What happens when digital representation becomes the primary reference? My new media installations are acts of speculative design for how future generations may attempt to reconstruct past versions of the environment with preserved digital media as primary reference points. I begin each new project with research into a specific ecosystem
through field work. I spend time slowly exploring on foot, observing the site, and recording what I see through digital media (audio recordings, photography, video, and photogrammetry), and supplement my explorations with research into that specific environment. I later use these digital assets and my memories to physically reconstruct the environment. The resulting installations combine organic and artificial materials to create immersive installations with kinetic components, time-based lighting, and sound. My practice negotiates the increasingly interconnected relationship between technology, memory, and nature — the quality of the representation of natural landscapes in digital interfaces, built with materials mined from the earth, increases as the natural environment is further degraded. I hope to generate dialogues about how our ability to immortalize fleeting moments in the natural environment through technology affects how we perceive, remember, and experience a rapidly changing natural world.

ARTIST BIO
Jill Stauffer is a Virginia based multimedia installation artist, originally from Pembroke Pines, FL. They hold an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), and a BA in Studio Art from Middlebury College. Jill has participated in artist residencies with NE Sculpture, Josephine Sculpture Park and the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Notable exhibitions include Next Gen 11.0 at VisArts, LevelUp at Brentwood Arts Exchange, where they received the Juror’s Award, and their solo show If Saltwater Heals Wounds at Glen Echo Park. Jill’s research has been recognized by their reception of the ArtsAmp Interdisciplinary Grant and the Clarvit Research Fellowship from UMD. Jill is also an arts educator, currently working as an Adjunct Lecturer with the UMD Department of Art, and as Fabrication Lab Specialist with Northern Virginia Community College. Jill creates multimedia installations that explore the transmutationof the natural environment through digital documentation, artificial replication, and memory.