Lisa Mann & Yo-Yo Lin: ROTO Pasadena

August 6, 2016

ROTO Pasadena, created by artists Lisa Mann and Yo-Yo Lin was a series of colorful animations that projected onto the facades of the Central Library, the Permit Center, City Hall, Police Station, and the Civic Auditorium.

Pasadena residents encountered large 10’-15’ high projections of police officers, librarians, and the City Council as they strolled down Garfield Avenue from the Central Library to the Civic Auditorium. The very buildings where these city workers resided were transformed into giant polka-dots, charcoal and pastel smudges, psychedelic paint swirls, and geometric patterns. 

Artists Lisa Mann and Yo-Yo Lin collaborated with several Northwest Pasadena groups to create a series of colorful, animated interviews that were projected onto the facades of these city buildings. During the event, participants were able to partake in hands-on workshops to learn how to rotoscope as well as interview a cross-section of people who worked inside the buildings.

BIO

Lisa Mann

Lisa Mann is a fine artist, an educator, a collaborator, and an exhibition director.  Since the early 80s, she has investigated a broad range of serious social and cultural issues preoccupying the American collective consciousness, often within the context of her own racially, ethnically, and economically mingled community of Northwest Pasadena and persistently through an intersectional feminist lens. 

Her research on technology and nature, homelessness, the connection between gun violence and children, the Rodney King police beating, domestic violence, domestic labor, and identity and culture, has culminated in live-action and animated film/video/audio work, sculpture, installation, projection mapping, photography, community-based art, and performance art. 

Mann often creates new objects by re-purposing and re-contextualizing existing objects, such as tents, grocery carts, and children’s play structures. She has exhibited installations in the Los Angeles area–the Gamble House, Side Street Projects, the Armory Center for the Arts, the Brewery, the old LA County Jail, Pasadena City Hall, Police Station and Library, and Pasadena’s Lower Arroyo Park

Yo-Yo Lin

Yo-Yo Lin is a Taiwanese-American, interdisciplinary media artist who explores the possibilities of human connection and embodiment in the context of emerging technologies. She uses intelligent projection/lighting, digital and hand-drawn animation, interactive objects, and lush sound design to create meditative 'memory scapes.' Her work often examines human perception as a vehicle for self-knowledge and community growth. 

Most recently an art resident at Eyebeam, Yo-Yo is researching and developing methodologies in reclaiming and processing chronic health trauma. She is currently developing a digital and physical toolkit that seeks to be an expressive resource and self-sustainable living archive of chronically ill and disabled bodyminds. 

She has shown new media works at international multimedia art galleries (Human Resources, Lincoln Center, La Corte Contemporanea), music festivals (Coachella, Panorama, Steez Day), film festivals (New York Film Festival, SXSW, LA Pacific Asian Film Festival), and public art venues. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Indiewire, and Surface Magazine.