/// Biography
Kynan Tan is an artist interested in digital systems, computation, perception, and our interdependent relations with technologies. His multisensory artworks investigate the materialities, networks, relationality, and control of digital systems. These works engage with code and data, taking form as multi-screen audiovisual performances and installations, computer-generated simulations, and electronic sound. His most recent body of work emerges from a sustained interest in data and algorithmic processes, and the ways that they increasingly determine our daily lives. His work seeks to show the problem with reducing complex processes to simple representations, instead attempting to generate work through which we feel the intensity and the physicality of such systems. In this sense, algorithmic culture — that which governs almost every aspect of daily life, affecting the way we bank, shop, travel, socialise and, increasingly, the way we come to understand the world — is an interplay between hardwares, softwares, humans, non-humans, programs, materials and networks.
Kynan’s installation work has been shown in the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art; Primavera 2017 — Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, Australia); Beijing Media Arts Biennale, Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing, China); Longli International New Media Art Festival (Guizhou, China); MOCA (Taipei, Taiwan); NH7 Festival (Pune, India); Perth Institute of Contemporary Art; Fremantle Arts Centre (Perth); Artspace (Sydney); and Firstdraft (Sydney). Kynan has been the recipient of a DCA Young People and the Arts Fellowship (2013), Australia Council Artstart grant (2013), and participated in the JUMP Mentorship Program (2012), studying with audio-visual artist Robin Fox. Kynan has performed in Japan, Germany, New Zealand and throughout Australia, including events such as Test Tone (Tokyo), Channels Video Art Festival (Melbourne) and the NOW now Festival of Art (Sydney).
Kynan was the co-organiser of the Didactic Tools project (2014-15) which incorporated workshops, a development program and an exhibition at Fremantle Arts Centre, WA. Kynan has worked extensively with collaborative projects in sound, contemporary dance, experimental theatre and interactive media, including Té with Andrew Brooks, microLandscapes with Emma Fishwick (Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, 2016), Assemblies for One Body with Rhiannon Newton (Metro Arts, Brisbane, 2015), Wintering by Aimee Smith (State Theatre, Perth, 2013) and Prompter by Hydra Poesis (Arts House Meat Market, Melbourne, 2013).
Kynan has tutored in art theory at The University of New South Wales and taught code and interactive design at the University of Technology, Sydney. Kynan has a PhD in media art from UNSW Art & Design and a Bachelor of Music (Honours) majoring in composition and music technology from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. He was Postdoctoral Fellow at UNSW Art & Design from 2018-2021. Recently Kynan has been focusing on teaching meditation, a topic that he has studied deeply from 2017.
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contact details
e: contact_ at _ kynantan.com
w: www.kynantan.com
w: www.negativespaces.net