Jacklyn Brickman teaches kinetic imaging which involves illustration, sound art, performance art, 3D modeling and so much more.

(gentle music) - Who is Jacklyn Brickman?

How would you describe yourself?

- Well, I'm a multidisciplinary artist and educator.

My work is playful.

I'm interested in tackling social and environmental topics.

And really at the heart of my work is people.

I'm interested in how people engage with one another, how they engage with their environment and their surroundings, and how they engage with me and my work.

- When did this all start, were you a young little budding Jacklyn artist?

- Yes, I, from a very young age, I knew I wanted to be an artist.

It's really the only job title I can remember wanting.

I drew, I did a lot of sewing, I was always creating things.

- So how did we make this career happen?

What were the steps?

- So many steps, I knew that I wanted to be an artist and right after high school I went to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

I started out as a photography major.

I love optics and light and space, and I found that I love photography and how it works, but when I hang a photograph on the wall, it just doesn't feel like the work to me.

And so I ended up switching to sculpture because in a sculpture setting, you can really think about space and relationships and people and bodies and how they occupy that space, and engage optics and light.

And I think really, I was always after this idea of kinetic imaging without knowing what it was at a young age.

- [Shelley] Let's stop there, kinetic imaging, what is it?

- Yeah, it's really moving images.

So kinetic imaging here at Western has three tracks in video, art, game art and animation.

All of those tracks involve moving images of some kind.

- Let's expand in more into your students, their involvement and how they are benefiting from your talents.

- They are learning a lot and we're having a lot of fun.

We are a brand new program, I should say, we just started last fall.

So I started with the first batch of students that came in.

We have mostly freshmen and sophomores right now in the program.

And I've been spending a lot of time teaching our foundation class, which is called Time and Process.

And that class is really focused on giving the students small bites of all things KI, they start out making GIFs, they design books.

We work in augmented reality so they make face filters for Instagram.

We work in virtual reality and then we view their VR worlds in a headset.

And all of those different avenues are directions they can choose to go with their degree in kinetic imaging.

- So that is what they want to do when they grow up.

- Right, yeah and what's so great about it is, you know, with a degree in KI, it is a bachelor of science and that gives us a lot of flexibility within the curriculum.

Students can be an animator in an animation studio.

They can edit and shoot video.

They can work on making games and they can also be artists.

- What do students need to succeed in this business?

- That's a great question.

I mean, we live in a digital world and we live in a world that evolves very fast.

Technology evolves very fast, to be able to stay abreast of new technology, you will constantly be learning and growing and evolving.

- Let's talk about your whole art as a performance.

Give me an example of the beginnings of a project, to stage presence.

- Really, I think all of my works starts out with being curious, being curious and noticing are really important parts of my practice and my teaching.

I love teaching because I love learning.

So being curious and asking questions and combining things that are unlikely is also of interest.

- Let's take a little trip in your office where we are.

- To talk about the onions you asked about earlier.

The goal was to grow a planet B with onions.

I was interested in onions, that's where it started.

I was curious about onions.

I had a beaker and I set one onion on top of a beaker and I watched the roots grow and then the idea kept evolving.

And so in the end it was a four week exhibition and performance, but it was durational performance, where I'm working in the exhibition as a laboratory tech and moving onions from different growth chambers in different stages, and then performing different experiments with the onions.

And preserving the planets that are failed, which are all of them, but yes.

- I bet that's fun dinner talk at the family.

- Yeah.

- What'd you do today?

Worked on my onions.

What is up here where you have, looks like water colory paintings of black and white Batman's.

- Sure, those are from a visiting artist, Ash Arder, who is an artist based in Detroit, came last semester and worked with my Time and Process students.

So those paintings are painted by students with conductive paint.

And then it's copper tape that's conductive.

And we had little micro computers hooked up to the ends of each of those panels.

And then a synthesizer hooked up to the microcomputer.

So because the paintings are conductive when the students then touch the paintings, different sounds were made.

- And what is this, are these bright lights with, looks like some surgical gloves ready to go to work?

- [Jacklyn] Sure, so that's a relic, so to speak, of a performance, "Grass Grows in the Icebox," that I recently worked on with Kelsey Paschich and Kevin Abbott.

It was a performance where the three of us had some live animation, animation that Kevin made in unity, animation that I made with a program called EbSynth.

Really the idea was about preservation.

So grass "Grass Grows in the Icebox" was the title of the exhibition.

We harvested some grass from the parking lot outside of the exhibition.

And then the performance aimed to explore how that grass is preserved through time.

Is it frozen, is it in an ice box?

Is it pulled apart and dissected?

- Talking about working with other professors, a lot of collaboration in this niche of your KI?

- Yeah, I think collaboration is incredibly fulfilling, generative in terms of ideas and also just fun.

I love working collaboratively, particularly cross discipline collaboration because it's an opportunity to learn something new and to bring minds together to create something that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

- Why support the arts in Kalamazoo?

- You know, the arts help us move through life.

The arts are a way that we can empathize with other people.

They're a way that we experience life collectively as a group.

And Kalamazoo is a great place to make sure that we do that as a community.

I should expand a little bit and say, I'm really interested in humor and absurdity and sometimes like the planet B made out of onions.

I think addressing difficult topics with humor and absurdity are ways to have a conversation you might not otherwise be able to have.

- And how long will those onions ultimately last in that jar?

- Well, that's a good question.

It's been three years and they've, they're not disintegrating yet.

So that's an experiment that I'll have to update you on.

- We'll be back in three years, thank you for your time.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for "Kalamazoo Lively Arts" is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.