Veronika Szkudlarek
vszkudlarek@ocadu.ca
Assistant Professor, Tenure-Track
Faculty of Art
Faculty of Art
Contemporary Painting
Virtual & Augmented Reality
Animation
Szkudlarek's experimental art practice considers the impact of XR, an umbrella term encompassing augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies, on contemporary painting and experimental animation. Painted textures - their imperfections, clumps and marks - function as an entropic disruption in a coded digital realm. Intersectionality, sustainability, feminism, hybridity and collective learning are concentrations within her research practice that offer alternative and inclusive models for hybrid innovation in the Fine Arts. Her abstract painterly experimentation in virtual environments act as a site of intervention.
Her work has been exhibited at Queens Museum, KCAI: Centre for Contemporary Practices, presented at NSCAD, Columbia University, VRTO, the FATE Biennale and published in the Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. She is the recipient of the Outstanding Merit Award from Pratt Institute, OCADU Faculty of Art Teaching Award, The Canada Foundation for Innovation Grant, several 2021 E-Campus Ontario grants, and shortlisted for the BLG Equity award. Szkudlarek is an Assistant Professor in Fine Arts at OCADU and an Associate Graduate Faculty Member at Ontario Tech University.
Virtual Materiality: Realistic Clay Sculpting in VR
Extended Abstracts of the 2021 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
Published: December 31st 2021
CHI PLAY '21: The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, Virtual Event, Austria, October 18-21, 2021
Type: Fine Art
Pratt Institute
Studio Art
Type: Fine Art
Concordia University
Assistant Professor
Type: Fine Art
Ontario College of Art and Design
Development of an XR-Art Studio Application to Enhance Remote Learning of the Traditional Arts
Type: Grant
Creation of an innovative eXtended Reality (XR) Art Studio (XRAS) to enhance remote-learning in the traditional Fine Arts in response to Covid-19. The XRAS provides instructors and learners with a tool that addresses learning gaps associated with fundamental colour theory and colour mixing. The shift from in-person studio instruction to virtual classrooms, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has revealed many learning disparities in the visual arts, from developing proper prediction of colour to nurturing colour sensitivities of cross-cultural perspectives. Our XR learning tool assists students both in the context of their own work and a broader artistic discourse, enabling a new generation of creators to develop transferable knowledge as well as psychomotor skills. Combining the Game and XR development expertise at Ontario Tech University with the Traditional Fine Arts expertise at OCADU, the XRAS will be an innovative and effective solution to the challenges presented by remote learning.
Capture Volumetric Video Content for Remote Learning
Type: Grant
This project develops volumetric content to be used by Ontario institutions in their fine arts programs to enhance remote learning through an embodied practice paradigm. Specifically, we record elements of studio arts practice in a number of fine arts programs (with a primary focus on material arts) to create immersive teaching content that will enable learners to better study particular artistic creation techniques. This content serves to address a gap that has emerged for studio-based instructors who have had to shift their instruction into online and/or hybrid contexts, which is communicating spatial, material and performative aspects of their instruction practice, to primarily visual and tactile learners.
Canada Foundation for Innovation OCADU
Type: Grant
Virtual Materiality
Type: Grant
Civic Art Lab and Greenspace NYC
Associate Graduate Faculty Member
Type: Computer Science
University of Ontario Institute of Technology