About the artist
关于艺术家
Nicole Ruggiero is a 3D visual artist from New York City that creates works centered around the internet and online trends. The themes of her works explore technology and the emotional and social culture surrounding it. Recently she has further expanded her exploration of online popularity, digital emotions, sexuality, feminism, and the female gaze. Using 3D figures and nostalgic imagery she blurs the boundary between the virtual and the real. Having a background in 3D graphic design, she makes animations and visuals in mediums such as augmented reality, virtual reality, animations, and more.
Nicole Ruggiero 是一位来自纽约的 3D 视觉艺术家，她的创作围绕着互联网，追赶着网络趋势。作品的主题在探索技术以及围绕它的情感和社会文化。最近，她进一步扩大了对网络流行度、数字情感、性、女权主义和女性凝视的探索。她使用 3D 人物和怀旧图像模糊了虚拟与现实之间的界限。她本身拥有 3D 平面设计的背景，在增强现实、虚拟现实、动画等媒体中制作动画和视觉效果。
The artist has been featured globally in places such as Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, India, Russia, and the USA. Her creations have also been showcased in New York Times, Adult Swim, VICE, Glamour, Widewalls, Monopol, NestHQ, and Keen On. Driven by learning new technologies, Nicole involves herself in the culture surrounding them and is constantly developing new abilities to evolve her art. Some of her notable shows include “Journey Through A Body” at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Dusseldorf, Germany (2021), the real-fake.org.02 at BronxArtSpace in New York City (2016).
这位艺术家曾在日本、中国、英国、澳大利亚、德国、印度、俄罗斯和美国等地在全球范围内亮相。她的作品也曾在纽约时报、Adult Swim、VICE、Glamour、Widewalls、Monopol、NestHQ 和 Keen On 上展出。在新技术的推动下， Nicole将自己融入到周围的文化中，并不断发展新的潜能来发展她的艺术。这些都在她的一些著名展览中得以展现，包括在德国杜塞尔多夫杜塞尔多夫艺术馆展出的“身体之旅”（2021 年），以及 2016 年纽约市布朗克斯艺术空间的 real-fake.org.02。
Nicole Ruggiero was intrigued by digital art communities through forums in middle school. Having seen the possibilities of digital art through other digital artists in her community and interacting with them, she was able to grow her skills. During that time, she was gifted a Wacom drawing tablet and has been making art ever since then. She is adept in various digital tools such as Cinema 4D, Photoshop, Illustrator, and more. She believes that working in 3D gives her a chance to find new ways of expressing her art as 3D art can exist not only as 2D prints or photographs but rather as a form of digital sculpture. She most frequently uses Cinema 4D to create 3D animations and images that can be integrated into virtual reality and augmented reality.
Nicole Ruggiero 在中学的时候通过论坛接触到了数字艺术社区，并对此充满兴趣。通过社区中的其他数字艺术家，她看到了数字艺术的多种可能性，与这些艺术家互动后，她也学习和提高了自己的技能。在那段时间，她收到了一台 Wacom 手绘板，从此开始创作。她擅长各种数字软件，例如 Cinema 4D、Photoshop、Illustrator 等。她相信 3D 工作让她有机会找到表达自己艺术的新方式，因为 3D 艺术不仅可以作为 2D 打印或图片存在，还可以以一种数字雕塑的形式存在。她最常使用 Cinema 4D 来创建可以集成到虚拟现实和增强现实中的 3D 动画和图像。
With her 3D artwork, she plays with the uncanny valley, a phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure that significantly resembles a human brings about a sense of unease. The emotional response is triggered by the familiarity of the humanoid object that neither behaves nor has the required characteristics to be seen as an actual human. Nicole does not hope to create that perfectly replicates the real world. Instead, she emphasizes the small artificial aspects that escape the eye and are visible through scrutiny. This is key to understanding the significance of Nicole Ruggiero’s art. While creating hyper-realistic art can be amazing, the intentionality of adding computer-generated elements to invoke an emotional response distinguishes her works from that of many other artists.
在她的3D作品里可以看到她对恐怖谷理论的运用，这是一种现象，即当机器人与人类的相似程度达到一个特定程度的时候，人类对他们的反应便会突然变得极其负面和反感而产生不安。情绪反应是由熟悉的类人对象而触发的，该对象既不表现也不具有被视为真实人类所需的特征。Nicole不希望创造出完美复制现实世界的东西。取而代之的是，她会着重表现那些非常细微的方面，那些人为的，很难被眼睛关注到的地方。这是理解 Nicole Ruggiero 艺术意义的关键之处。虽然创造超现实主义艺术已经很令人惊叹，但添加计算机生成的元素以引发情感反应，将她的作品与许多其他艺术家的作品区分开来。
Because the internet…
一切起源于互联网…
The internet plays a key role in the majority of her works. The cultural context of the internet, its communities, as well as its seemingly universal language, are all aspects she ponders about. It is her source for creating ideas and also a space for reflecting on the passage of time. Works using the sense of nostalgia and the simple connection to social media are some of the artist’s most popular works. For her, the internet itself is a semblance of a version of real-life projected in a new dimension where people express themselves and communicate.
互联网在她的大部分作品中发挥着关键作用。互联网的文化背景、社区，以及看似通用的语言，都是她思考的方方面面。这是她创造想法的源泉，也是她留给自己反思时间流逝的一个空间。使用怀旧感和与社交媒体的简单联系的作品是她最受欢迎的一些作品。对她来说，互联网本身就是一种现实生活的版本，投射在人们表达自己和交流的新维度中。
“The Internet is used as a cathartic space where individuals flock in order to relieve themselves of their emotions and to communicate with other people. Similarly, that is how I use the Internet and mainly why I create.”
“互联网被用作一个宣泄空间，人们蜂拥而至，以减轻自己的情绪并与他人交流。同样，这就是我使用互联网的方式，也是我创作的主要原因。”
The internet is an eccentric area where some see it as a disconnect from reality while others use it to connect with others. At the same time, the artist notices the distinctions between people’s offline and online personalities. People’s identities are molded with intention and the idea of how one’s portrayal is perceived. In this process, she believes our current state of being both online and offline has had a large impact on what defines when we are online, offline, or even both, when the simple act of checking your phone blurs this distinction. These types of distinctions of the internet are explored in her project “How The Internet Changed My Life”.
互联网是一个古怪的领域，有些人认为它与现实脱节，而另一些人则使用它与他人联系。同时，艺术家注意到人们在线下和线上个性的区别。人们的身份往往是带着一种意图的，他人如何看待自己的形象塑造了一个人的身份。在这个过程中，她认为我们当前在互联网线上和线下的状态，因为看手机这个行为产生了很大的影响，模糊了我们在线上和线下的区别。在她的项目“互联网如何改变了我的生活”中探讨了互联网的这些类型的区别。
“How The Internet Changed My Life” is a mixed reality (XR) portrait and installation project that takes a look at social networking as the leading driver within the millennial culture. The work features the stories of subjects who carry a close bond to the internet and the impact the internet has brought to them. The transformation he/she had and the experiences with how he/she influenced others. Collecting submissions of such stories, she creates a digital embodiment through the subject’s portrait which represents his or her perception and behavior on the internet. The viewing experience is enriched by the addition of XR which emotes the subject’s emotions and activates 3D interactions associated with the subject’s stories.
“互联网如何改变了我的生活”是一个混合现实 (XR) 肖像和装置项目，将社交网络视为千禧一代文化的主要驱动力。这些作品讲述了与互联网有着密切联系的主题的故事以及互联网给他们带来的影响。他/她所经历的转变以及他/她如何影响他人的经历。收集这些故事，她通过创建作品主体的数字化肖像展现出来，代表着他或她在互联网上的看法和行为。通过添加 XR 来丰富观看体验，XR 可以表达对象的情绪并激活与对象故事相关的 3D 交互。
“I started this project because the internet has been an important way I have formed my identity and I wanted to highlight others who use the internet as a primary means to identify as well. It all started with interviewing different people about their online experiences and flying to different places to take their portraits.”
“我开始这个项目是因为互联网一直是我形成身份的重要方式，所以我想关注其他使用互联网作为主要身份识别手段的人。这一切都始于采访不同的对象关于他们的网络在线体验，并乘飞机飞往不同的地方去拍摄他们的肖像。”
Recently, Nicole Ruggiero’s work, SUBLIME was displayed on billboards in the New York Times Square, Seoul, Tokyo, Berlin, and Madrid as part of a brand collaboration between Porsche and KÖNIG. She is now working on new artworks that will be focusing more on VR sculpting for her upcoming projects.
最近，Nicole Ruggiero 的作品 “SUBLIME” 作为保时捷与 KÖNIG 品牌合作的一部分在纽约时代广场、首尔、东京、柏林和马德里展出。她现在正在创作新的艺术作品，之后会更多地关注她即将创作的作品的 VR 雕刻。
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Translation 翻译 Rona Xia
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