About
My practice is a process of questioning the relationship between nature, language and technology via interdisciplinary and conceptual drawing methods. I engage with allographic approaches to drawing and music composition. For me, drawing is a record to play, sample, record, mix and re-mix. I record light, time, motion and sound with a lens, microphone, and/or a stylus— the recordings become a part of a dynamic archive and material for site-specific installations, performances, and/or samples.
Mobile recording technologies become philosophical tools to engage with territory. Recordings are taken out of context re-played, re-mixed, re-shaped and re-presented anew according to ground, space, venue and/or site. Each location is also considered material for sonic and visual compositions.
The works combine electronic and acoustic elements, and incorporate both notation and improvisation. Being active as a composer/performer has led me to explore a visual approach to electronic music and a musical approach to drawing. My works oscillate between states of representation and fragmentation, object and process and incorporates both notation and improvisation. The work can take the form of collage, DJ sets, scores, experimental performance, concrete poetry, instrument design, photography, programming, embroidery, site-specific installations, video and works for internet or paper.
Jassie Rios
B. Laredo, TX
Lives and works in Washington, DC
JA$$IE is a musician, visual artist and educator questioning the relationship between nature, language and technology via interdisciplinary and conceptual drawing methods. She teaches undergraduate Drawing and 3D Design at the Catholic University of America and also teaches Darkroom and Digital Photography at the Visual and Performing Arts program at Suitland High School with Prince George’s County Public Schools. She holds a K-12 Advanced Professional Teaching Certification in Visual Arts and a 200 YTT Certification in Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga.
Originally from Laredo, Texas, a border city, shaped the way she mixes and blends ideas, material and media. Growing up on the edge of El Rio Grande influenced her ways of thinking about nature, movement, territory and language. Hybrid modes became engrained in the architecture of the everyday along the border. Her work draws inspiration from Hip Hop, Philosophy, Nature, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
JA$$IE’s work has been recognized by Suzanne Ciani, Perry Cook, and Teenage Engineering who juried the 2018 Margaret Guthman New Instrument Design Competition; awarding Jassie the prestigious New Musical Instrument Design Award at Georgia Tech for her instrument GramFX, a hybrid turntable programmed in Pure Data In 2023-2024 she was awarded the Creative Leaders Fellowship: Towards 2040 with Words, Beats and Life. Artist in Residence at Signal Culture, Owego, NY. She has performed and exhibited at the Kennedy Art Center (Washington, DC), Eaton Hotel (Washington, DC), Katzen Art Center (Washington, DC), Torpedo Factory Art Center (Arlington, VA), Rhizome DC (Washington, DC), Wave Farm (Acra, NY), ShapeShifter Lab (Gowanus, NY), 2016 Pure Data Conference at Stevens Institute for Technology (Hoboken, NJ).