Amy Traylor (CV)

Amy Traylor is a multimedia computational artist, educator, and mother of four. Born in Alabama and raised in Louisiana, she received undergraduate degrees in anthropology and photography from Louisiana State University. After moving to New Mexico in 2000, Traylor completed her Master’s degree in Art Education in 2009 and her MFA in Experimental Art and Technology in 2020, both from the University of New Mexico. Traylor’s primary medium is software, which she writes to investigate the complexities of art, culture, science, and computation. She is a researcher and curator in the history of computational art and computation as philosophy. Traylor has shown work at Site Santa Fe, the Albuquerque Museum, Currents New Media Festival, the MIT Media Lab, and the Southwest Biennial at the Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe. She will begin a PhD in computer science with Leah Buechley’s “Hand and Machine” group in the fall of 2021.

Artist Statement

I began my career as a photographer observing human behavior, manifested through cultural algorithms, situated in physical spaces. In 2012, my practice evolved to include computation and production of cultural algorithms. Within an expansive practice, I write custom software, frequently generative systems, to create new rituals and ritualized objects, to illuminate the convoluted relationship between our biological selves and the culture we create. The computational complexity of the computer algorithms I write frequently mirror and give fodder for reflection on the complexities of human behavior. 

I reimagine new futures where computation and the creation of algorithms is seen as an essential domestic task and an essential feminine skill. As an educator, I empower new coders to see their world as malleable, enabling them to sculpt new futures through computation.

I identify with the double consciousness of the participant/observer, the central methodology of anthropology. Anthropologists must simultaneously perform as insiders while thinking as outsiders.

I participate in “anthropology of the near.”

“Artists, like ethnographers, train their eyes to see things other people don’t see. They try to present what they see so that we, the audience, can glimpse something where we have looked a thousand times and failed to find anything noteworthy.”

Anthropologist Martin Hoyem