Bryce Zeffert

Background

About Bryce Zeffert

I am an emerging arts professional with a passion for learning and education in the arts. Part Japanese and Ashkenazi Jewish, born in Jakarta, Indonesia, and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii after the age of ten, my multicultural heritage and upbringing informs my unique point of view and diverse interests in many areas of art history. Through my curatorial and archival practices it is my goal to participate in something greater than myself in the pursuit of a concept of art and life as inextricably connected. Communication is at the center of who I am as a person. I am a strong writer, and pride myself on my ability to research and write on just about anything, including previously unfamiliar topics. I am also inquisitive and genuinely wish to learn and understand the ideas and needs of others. These qualities enable me to both empathise and work effectively as part of a team, as well as work independently, setting tasks for myself and managing my time.I am diligent, persistent and highly adaptive. I work well under pressure and find myself able to maintain a calm and rational demeanour in complex scenarios. Amongst my greater strengths is finding resourceful and caring solutions to challenges as they arise. My master’s thesis titled “Syncretic Learning in Augmented Reality Public Monuments” examines how the utilisation of augmented reality in Judith F. Baca’s public monument The River Once Ran (2022) enhances the experience of the monument both in terms of how we interact with and receive our public histories, and in activist artists’ ability to achieve their political objectives. I discuss the democratisation of communication technology since the advent of the Sony Portapak in 1967 up until the present day, alongside a close reading of Gene Youngblood’s 1970 text Expanded Cinema that proposed the concept of a neurological phenomenon known as synaesthesia wherein a more effective form of learning called syncretic learning becomes possible in experimental modes of video art. The impetus for this research originated in the idea that as advances in communication technology have transformed the intermedia environment, this compels us to enhance the effectiveness of our public monuments in the language of our new media.