Alicia Eggert

born in 1981 in New Jersey, USA, lives and works in Portland, Maine, USA

Eggert is an interdisciplinary artist whose work commonly takes the form of kinetic, interactive, and time-based sculpture. She often uses language and time as sculptural materials. The inventor Charles Babbage once said, “Machines have been taught arithmetic instead of poetry.” The artist tries in a way, to teach machines poetry. She teaches them to stop making sense. Like found objects, written language appeals to her desire to provide her audience with a very basic level of accessibility. The words and phrases that intrigue her most are found in our everyday vocabulary, simple words that have many definitions and thereby allow for multiple layers of meaning. If such a word or phrase is constructed in three dimensions, it can be broken down into its most fundamental parts, and assembled and disassembled over time or as a result of viewer interaction. Because her art practice is driven by concept as opposed to process, her most successful work is made in collaboration. Collaborating with other artists allows Eggert to share the experience, the excitement, the responsibility and the success with another person. The final product is essentially also a collaboration, this time between the artists and the audience. In the end, the work belongs to viewer as much as it does to her. Eggert’s work has been shown at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, SIGGRAPH Asia in Hong Kong, the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, and at institutions in Canada, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, St. Louis, Buffalo, and elsewhere. Later this year, her work will be featured in the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2012) at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, and at the 16th Annual Sculpture by the Sea in Sydney, Australia. The artist currently resides in Portland, Maine, and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Bowdoin College.

What do contemporary people need art for?
People need art for the same reasons they need religion. They need it to shine a new light on their everyday reality, to allow them to see the world from a different perspective, to encourage them to reconsider their priorities, and, most importantly, to inspire wonder and ask questions that are ultimately unanswerable.

Why do YOU create art?
For me, making art means testing the limits of possibility, to give material form to otherwise intangible ideas. I think of an idea, I wonder if it is possible, I work with others towards solving the problem, and I bring something into existence that would otherwise not exist. By allowing myself to wonder in this way, I hope to encourage others to do the same.