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Matthew Gantt in a custom Doll’s-House avatar, streaming live processed audio in real time, 2020. Screen captures. Courtesy Claudia Hart.
The last time I saw Asher was in late November. He was packing up his loft in Chelsea having finally found a potential buyer. The loft is a part of media-art history. Downstairs, Asher founded the Remy-Toledo feminist video gallery. And later, on the ground floor, The Red Door—an experimental theater start-up version of Hyphen Hub. Then finally, it housed Hyphen Hub salons: a nexus for the digital art world.
Last November, we mainly talked about friendship. How, in the end, in public life, despite all of the people that we meet and with whom we converse, the meaning of it was really intimacy with close friends. Then we parted. Asher returned to Medellín, his home town.
Matthew Gantt in a custom Doll’s-House avatar, streaming live processed audio in real time, 2020. Screen captures. Courtesy Claudia Hart.
Shortly upon arrival, Asher was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The prognosis was not good. At the same time, I fell on black ice, shattering my pelvic girdle. I was confined to bed, immobile for three months. We spoke often on the phone, listening to experimental trance music to transcend our pain, and talking about life. Asher specifically requested that I tell him about whatever it was that I was working on. He wanted to talk about ART—the good thing. It made him happy to listen to me, and to think about the work that I described. So in memoriam, I am sharing an older piece that Asher and I made together, during the COVID quarantine in 2020.
Matthew Gantt in a custom Doll’s-House avatar, streaming live processed audio in real time, 2020. Screen captures. Courtesy Claudia Hart.
We staged poetry readings and audio-visual events in Mozilla Hubs, an open-source, web-based virtual reality platform, now defunct. In the midst of COVID, when everyone felt scared and isolated, we responded with verve. One of the craziest things we did was “Welcome to the Doll's House,” a live-streamed virtual performance, curated by Hyphen Hub as part of the Rome Maker's Fair and the Real-Mix Technology festivals. I built a simulated theater, The Doll's House XR, an Op/Pop fantastical installation. It featured recorded music composed by Kurt Hentschlaeger for the original live ballet 2015 version, The Dolls. This new social VR translation featured a streaming avatar performance by Matthew Gantt, made to layer over the original soundtrack. It was really a kind of fun-house, and wild!
Claudia in a Mozilla Hubs candy-corn avatar body greeting arriving guests, 2020. Screen capture. Courtesy Claudia Hart.
Asher’s loss is heartbreaking. It is only now that I see that he was a giving friend to SO many! He will be missed in uncountable ways. But here instead, I want to heal, remembering the eccentric spectacles that were his specialty, and that wonderful, unique magic that was truly his to make.
Claudia Hart was an early adopter of virtual imaging, using 3D animation VR, AR, and objects made with computer-driven production machines. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she developed a pedagogic program based on this concept - Experimental 3D - the first dedicated program teaching simulations technologies in an art-world context.