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Mollye Bendell

Animation / Video / Film, Multimedia, Sculpture / Installation, Visual / Media

My work playfully meditates on the material qualities of an increasingly less physical world. Media such as WiFi networks and virtual reality help my attempt to understand place and emptiness. I work in the liminal space between physical beings, building a practice around intangibility and meditating on the act of making in the absence of the object. A strong component of that is emotional - our spirit, our ghost, getting lost in the machine - and by extension sociological. The ephemeral nature of electronic media acts as a vector to explore vulnerability, visibility, and longing in a world that can feel isolating.

About the Artist

Mollye Bendell is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus in electronic and immersive media.  She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  She has developed augmented and virtual reality projects as a resident of Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. She is also a founding member of media arts collective strikeWare, which creates experiences grounded in our collective history, often using new technologies to emphasize the nowness of that history. Mollye has recently exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art and CURRENTS New Media Festival. 

Mollye Bendell website View Gallery

Featured Work

Photos

An ongoing series of sculptural radios in which the weather affects the output of the radio. Over time, these works have evolved into crystal radios, which require no external power supply. With a high resistance earphone, one can hear radio transmissions powered entirely through the signals themselves. The radios are sensitive to changes in their environment. Listeners are welcome to gently handle the pieces to change the sound.
One of three.
Two of three.
Three of three.

Videos

  • Outgrown

    See more information about Outgrown
    Outgrown is a fantasy and a eulogy for weeds. Using augmented reality, this piece resurrects the weeds that once grew in a space and envisions a parallel world in which they now thrive. An interactant looks through one of the provided tablets at each glowing panel and sees the spirits of plants rise up to claim back a space of their own. They are meant to bring a strange kind of beauty, but also a glimpse of post-apocalyptic biodiversity, of a natural world that's had enough and won't sit still for us much longer.
    Medium: augmented reality
    Year: 2022
    Details: variable, roughly 6x8'

  • Wander/Wonder

    See more information about Wander/Wonder
    Wander/Wonder consists of two separate but connected experiences: Wander, a walkable virtual street map of Baltimore City with all buildings removed except for psychic reader storefronts, and Wonder, a zero-gravity digital astral plane experienced as a virtual reality (VR) environment.

    As an interactant flies through the Wonder side via VR headset, the Wander side is projected on screen for spectators to view. The interactant uses a crystal ball to navigate both environments simultaneously - guiding the experiences of spectators in Wander while fully immersed in the VR environment of Wonder.
    Medium: virtual reality and immersive projection
    Year: 2018
    Details: Room-scale installation

  • Recorder

    See more information about Recorder
    Recorder gestures toward the ephemerality of information by recording audio into sand.
    Medium: Sand, acrylic, electronics including speaker and mic.
    Year: 2017
    Details: ~18 x 24 x 6"