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A "Secret Garden" blooms at Sundance Film Festival 2021

Commissioned and co-produced by the Onassis Foundation

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Stephanie Dinkins, participating artist at Onassis NEW INC eXtended reality (ONX) Studio is presenting “Secret Garden” at 2021 Sundance Film Festival from January 28 to February 3 on a virtual event.

Step into a garden and encounter oral histories spanning generations of African American women. As you wander this spatialized tract, you will encounter women with stories to tell: surviving a slave boat, growing up on a 1920s Black-owned farm, surviving 9/11, and embodying an AI powered by African American women. "Secret Garden" reminds us that sharing and receiving stories is an act of resistance.

Secret Garden Project

Secret Garden is an immersive storytelling installation that combines audio vignettes told by black women with dynamic, responsive visual feedback. This work was originally invited to debut at SXSW 2020, but it will now debut as part of Sundance New Frontier 2021. The work is experienced as a non-linear, episodic narrative of a multi-generational past, present, and future simultaneously. Conceived by artist Stephanie Dinkins, Secret Garden is inspired by autobiographical, ancestral, and futuristic experiences that highlight black female consciousness throughout history.

In addition to Secret Garden, Stephanie Dinkins and fellow ONX members Ari Melenciano and Idris Brewster along with filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison have been selected by New Frontier to premiere their work, Traveling the Interstitium with Octavia Butler, produced in association with NY Live Arts. Of the fourteen projects selected for New Frontier, four were created by NEW INC alumni and ONX members.

ONX studio will have an accompanying free public program on February 2, from 12-1:00 pm EST. “Bodies in Space: Storytelling and the Moving Image in Extended Reality” features Tribeca Film Festival’s Loren Hammonds moderating a conversation with two artists–Stephanie Dinkins and Loukia Alavanou--whose practices embrace storytelling through VR, AR, and experiential design.

Commissioned by Nokia Bell Labs and the Onassis Foundation.

Dinkins’s Secret Garden is the culmination of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) residency program that engages NEW INC alumni and Nokia Bell Labs researchers for a year-long collaboration to produce new works of art that are enabled by Nokia Bell Labs technology.

Secret Garden was also commissioned as part of the Eureka Commissions by Onassis USA, an initiative catalyzing forward-looking, exploratory, interrogative work within a new cultural landscape irrevocably changed by COVID-19 and a society grappling with social and racial injustice.

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All the New Frontier projects will be showcased in a custom built digital platform, and Secret Garden will additionally have a special in-person presentation at ONX Studio, located at 645 Fifth Avenue in New York City, with the installation designed to meet best practices of social distancing. Secret Garden will run with timed ticketing on January 29 to February 3, from 12-7:00 pm each day.
About the artist
The New York Times featured Dinkins in its pages as an AI influencer. Apple Inc recognized Dinkins’ research and community-centered efforts by featuring her as a local hero in their “Behind the Mac” ad campaign (Brooklyn, NY edition). Wired, Art In America, Artsy, Art21, Hyperallergic, the BBC, Wilson Quarterly, and a host of popular podcasts have recently highlighted Dinkins' art and ideas.

Bio

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Credits

Lead Artist: Stephanie Dinkins

Key Collaborators: Ethan Edwards, John Fitzgerald, Matthew Niederhauser, Danielle McPhatter, Sidney San Martín, Kate Stevenson, Adaora Udoji,Chris White

Producers: Stephanie Dinkins, Adaora Udoji, Nokia Bell Labs, NEW INC, ONX StudioCommissioned by Onassis Foundation & Nokia Bell Labs

Technical Director: Sensorium

Lead Developers: Dot Dot, Sidney San Martín

Creative Technologists: Danielle McPhatter, Ethan Edwards, Nokia Bell Labs

3-D Artist: Jessa Gillespie

Writers: Stephanie Dinkins, Jade Dinkins

Production Sound: Hidden Chapel Studios

Production Support: Hard Work Party, Dirt Empire, Noel Paul

With Support from Scatter

Cast: Dayne Board, Erlene Curry, Tianna Mendez, Melissa Moore, Brandi Porter, Lisa Sainville

Year: 2021

Category: Project

Country: United States

Run time: 48 min

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