INDIGO WOOLFREY

Glitch & Media Artist

Email: artbywoolfrey@gmail.com

ARTIST BIO

Indigo is a trans, neurodivergent glitch & digital media artist, as well as an assistant curator and installation technician for A4 Sounds

The overarching themes of their practice include gender, alchemy, and accessibility in art. She explores these through both a studio based and collaborative practice.

Indigo’s artwork focuses on utilising glitch art as a mode of alchemy in order to pose a new technology of transition in the face of medicalised, gate-kept systems currently available to most in the West.

The themes and politics of her work are explored through writing for organisations such as the Trans* Research Association of Ireland, FormatC in Croatia, and upcoming journal publications such as in the Irish University Review.

Her art, like many other glitch artists, exists mostly online: making the work accessible from anywhere at any time. They make it using open-source software when possible in order to allow others to recreate and expand upon it. She discusses gender through expanded metaphor in hopes others can learn from it and apply its meaning to other topics, such as the lived existences of other marginalised identities.

In their studio practice they use digital glitches as a way to deconstruct the narratives they question in their work. She uses visual metaphors of alchemy and metamorphosis to describe their take on the ever-shifting nature of gender and the need for change to combat the rise of far right narratives which directly affect queer and otherwise marginalised peoples.

SELECTED WORKS

Rebis-in-Situ

2023

Gaussian Splatting

Credits

Indigo Woolfrey, Visuals & Sound.

This series of work focuses on expanding Indigo’s glitch art practice into the realm of 3D. Using photogrammetry and Gaussian Splatting processes, They unlock new pathways to disruption in her practice. The work marries the transmutative practice of alchemy and the transformative powers of glitch art as a tool to observe the metamorphosis of transness, both physical and theoretical.

These processes interrogate the passive act of straightforward acceptance in the contemporary world, breaking down the assumed roles of matter and people alike. Through these pieces, Indigo takes on the role of the alchemist transmuting subjects in order to understand the self, as conceived through Carl Jung’s theories.

Metamorphic Alchemy

2024

3d Glitch

Credits

Indigo Woolfrey, Visual Artist.

This work uses Make Human to create idealised versions of Indigo’s trans body. These bodies are manipulated in Blender and glitched using Notepad++ to edit the data that builds the object file. The bodies are meshed with various materials and objects from nature to depict dehumanisation and a return to the forest. Together with the glitches they explore a metamorphosed self, transmuted into new forms. The work is posted on Instagram with descriptions as if they were test subjects for a new form of alchemy.

Slip - Work in Progress

2021

Datamoshing

Credits

Indigo Woolfrey, Visual Edits. Sinead O’Donnell-Carey, Footage.

This work was commissioned as a proof of concept by Fidé Theatre for a conceptual theatre piece to be shown on stage, projected over live actors. It touches on themes of women’s autonomy and the use of asylums to remove their control.