Kleo McNeill (She/Her)
Kleo is a dark industrial glitch-pop singer/songwriter, producer, visual and performance artist whose works focus on our dystopian now: our relationship with technology and artificial-intelligence, our sense of reality in the age of social media, and how the line between ‘consumer’ and ‘product’ is becoming increasingly blurred. Kleo’s works ask us to examine what is means to be human at a time where human and machine are becoming synonymous, and to imagine the future of humanity.
3D Works & Graphic Designs
Different Place
A Different Place and is intended to serve as a 360 experience to ‘take you out of your head’ during an anxious or depressed time. The project is a direct reflection of my own situation currently. I have always struggled with my mental health, and now, due to the Coronavirus pandemic and continuous lockdowns, my mental health has only gotten worse. This seems to be the situation for so many people around the country. There is almost no escape from what is going on in the world. It isn’t safe outside – and being trapped inside makes everything worse. So, I wanted to build my own escape – which has been the pursuit of many artists and humans for centauries. We use art and imagination to extend, explore and augment our realities for many different reasons: documentation, expression and escapism. In recent years, VR has become a part of this.
The work consists of spatialised audio and a 360 environment up in the clouds. It is best viewed using a mobile device or VR headset. As you use your phone to explore the scene the audio will change. If viewing on a VR headset please view responsibly and adhere to the safety guidelines here.
Inside Abstract
Inside abstract is an audio/video project exploring the environment of an abstract digital art work as it is created, in a 360 view.
Around the 360 sphere, as marks are made on the canvas, there is an accompanying sound. Each texture, colour and shape has a unique sound which represents the sound imagined or felt by the artist when making that mark.
In this series, the artist is presenting 3 digital works in this style named Sora, Kawa and Toshi. Japanese names meaning Sky, River and City (or Town) when translated into English.
Through the project the artist seeks to get back in touch with her sense of fun and enjoyment around creating by stepping back from the music industry and engaging in something entirely different but none the less engaging.
For best experience please view the works via the website: https://insideabstract360.wordpress.com/
If viewing on a VR Headset please adhere to the safety guidelines here
Many thanks to Masaki Ishikawa (amazing fellow artist and boyfriend) who inspired this project and taught me about bringing fun back into my work – view his graduate showcase here
Project Links
They Dream of Waking Up
Kleo’s most recent work of visual art for social media/ gallery display, ‘THEY DREAM OF WAKING UP’ is a continued exploration of how people respond to social media content. This project uses an ‘anonymous’-like quality to assess people’s sense of reality within its intended setting.
The work comprises of abrupt 15 second videos (this style is commonly used on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram in the pursuit of viral media), made up of a mixture of Siri-like text to speech narration, found footage, news reals and iPhone12 footage shot in portrait discussing the possibility and consequence of sentient A.I.
The aim of this project is to encourage people to investigate what they are consuming on social media – which they so often do not. To make them want to discover the truth for themselves, investigate the videos, their content and the person who created them.
The project blends reality and fabrication together using actual news footage and interviews, and the narration from a fictional sentient Android’s perspective, with the aims of discussing where we are a society vs where we will inevitably be once the race to sentient A.I. is won.
“The dystopia is never somewhere else. And no firewall could keep sentient A.I. out” – Kleo rephrasing Norman MacCaig’s Hotel Room, 12th Floor.
