Faculty Profile

Darrin Martin
Co-Chair, Department of Art and Art History
Professor of Art

Video and Media ArtsM.F.A. University of California, San Diego, 2000B.F.A. NYSC, Alfred University, School of Art and Design, Alfred, NY, 1992Appointed 2005

Darrin Martin is an artist and educator. Through video, sculpture, and print-based installations, his works engage the synesthetic qualities of perception. Concerned with what is gained and lost in the process of translation as mediated by both old and new technologies and influenced by his own experiences with hearing loss, his current projects consider notions of accessibility through the use of tactility, sonic analogies, and audio descriptions. His videos have screened internationally at festivals and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (NY); Pacific Film Archive (CA), Impakt Festival (Netherlands), and European Media Art Festival (Germany). His installations have exhibited at venues including The Kitchen (NY), University of Toronto (Canada), and Grand Central Art Center (CA). In 2015, he held solo exhibitions at Aggregate Space Gallery (CA), Art Space on Main (CA), and Art & Design Gallery (KS).

 Martin frequently collaborates with artist Torsten Zenas Burns, building diverse speculative fictions around re-imagined educational practices.  Their works have been included in screenings and exhibitions in venues including The Oberhausen Short Film Festival, The Paris/Berlin International, Eyebeam, and Dumbo Arts Center in Brooklyn. They recently mounted an exhibition titled “ARK3: The Workshop Scenarios” at the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery at Alfred University in Alfred, NY that was re-imagined and augmented last summer at Krowswork Gallery in Oakland, CA.

Martin received his art degrees with an emphasis on video and sculpture from Alfred University’s School of Art and Design (BFA) and University of California, San Diego (MFA). He has held artist residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts, Eyebeam, Experimental Television Center, and Signal Culture. Martin also occasionally curates video screenings, most recently, an exhibition of works by 18 artists for Vanity Projects in New York City and Parsons Hall Project Space in Holyoke, MA, titled “Tooth and Nail.” 

(530) 754-2594
Room 304, Art Building
dtmartin[remove-this-and-replace-with-at]ucdavis.edu
Announcement

Professor Darrin Martin’s Crash Satellite recently acquired by SFMOMA

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin’s Crash Satellite was recently acquired by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection.  

Announcement

Professor Martin publishes article in Leonardo

Darrin Martin

In collaboration with the nonprofit video arts distributor Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), Professor Darrin Martin has published an article reflecting on his efforts to examine the EAI archive for videos exploring themes of disability or that engage modes of access like captioning and audio description. 

Announcement

Professor Martin curates film program at Ann Arbor Film Festival

Darrin Martin

The 62nd Ann Arbor Film Festival will present a free encore screening of the program “What Are Words For?” on Sunday, April 7, 4  p.m. at the Michigan Theater.  The program, curated by Professor Darrin Martin, is available now in the online festival through April 7. 

Announcement

Professor Darrin Martin in show exploring the aesthetics and politics of breathing

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin is featured in the exhibition “Resistance & Respiration” at the Contemporary Calgary which takes inspiration from the scholarship of Jean-Thomas Tremblay and his book Breathing Aesthetics (2022)

Announcement

New work by Professor Darrin Martin featured in Replenish

Darrin Martin

“Steel Tongue Accordion Ears,” a new sound piece by Professor Darrin Martin, is now accessible on MIT List Visual Art Center’s online sound experiences titled Replenish.

Announcement

Professor Darrin Martin in solo show at Recology

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin’s Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco culminates with an exhibition titled “Past Life Resonance.” In this solo show, Martin explores the possibilities of tuning in to everyday things and surroundings and the resonances embedded in the things we have thrown away. 

Announcement

(Mis)Reading the Image: Professor Martin on accessibility and disability representation

Darrin Martin

“(Mis)Reading the Image: Selections by Darrin Martin” will be presented by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) on Mar. 30 at 2:00 pm (EST).

Announcement

Professor Martin premiers live performance at Ann Arbor Film Festival

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin’s “Along the Perimeter” will premier as a live performance turned into an installation as part of the Ann Arbor Film Festival’s Off the Screen series.

Announcement

Shiva Ahmadi and Darrin Martin at Saint Joseph’s Arts Society

Darrin Martin Shiva Ahmadi

Works by professors Darrin Martin and Shiva Ahmadi will be on view January 19 to March 31 at the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society. 

Announcement

Professor Darrin Martin and alum Torreya Cummings awarded Recology residencies

Darrin Martin

Recology San Francisco announced the recipients of their artist residencies for 2023 and Professor Darrin Martin and alum Torreya Cummings have made the list. 

Announcement

Professor Martin featured in “Crip”

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin’s video and 3D print “Contrapposto” is included in “Crip*,” a new traveling exhibition curated by Liza Sylvestre at Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois.  

Announcement

Professor Martin in group show at Southern Exposure

Darrin Martin

“Take Breath is Breath (Breathe),” Professor Darrin Martin’s new video in response to the pandemic, makes its premiere as part of “Interconnected,” a group show curated by Jackie Clay and Jillian Crochet at San Francisco’s Southern Exposure.

Announcement

Professor Darrin Martin published essay in Performance Matters

Darrin Martin

“Audio Description as a Generative Process in Art Practice,” written by Professor Darrin Martin, has been included in Performance Matters, Vol. 6 No. 1 (2020). This issue, entitled Copresence with the Camera, is edited by Lynette Hunter, Alex Lichtenfels, Heather Nolan, and John Zibell. Martin’s essay bridges the practice of audio description in my own work to other historical and contemporary examples of video art.

Announcement

Professor Darrin Martin in “Invocation Democracy”

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin is participating in the group exhibition “Invocation Democracy,” a political and mystical virtual exhibition curated by Monet Clark and hosted by Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland, CA, through Inauguration Day, on January 20th, 2021. 

News

Celebrating Artist Wayne Thiebaud’s 100th Birthday

Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) Darrin Martin Annabeth Rosen

Members of the faculty of the Department of Art and Art History have completed a video featuring artists, alumni, faculty, staff, friends and people wishing Wayne Thiebaud a very happy 100th birthday! 

Announcement

Professor Darrin Martin in “The Archive to Come”

Darrin Martin

Telematic Media Arts has produced “The Archive to Come,” an exhibition (online and in the gallery) of short time-based works that address questions of loss, memorialization, crisis, and re-invention, through the lens of contemporary networked culture and digital media. Professor Darrin Martin, along with curators Clark Buckner and Carla Gannis and numerous other artists, address fundamental questions about what we value and want to preserve as we work to recover from their ravages and build for the future. 

Announcement

Darrin Martin participates in the Chicago Underground Film Festival

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin’s video “The Casts” will be shown in the ”Best of CUFF” (Chicago Underground Film Festival). 

Announcement

Darrin Martin in “The Many Faces of Bill Arning”

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin has collaborated with photographer Jamil Hellu on four images on display in the exhibition “The Many Faces of Bill Arning.” The show, on view now at the Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York until August 28, honors the curator Bill Arning on his 60th birthday. The exhibit features over one hundred pieces of mailed in art by many of the artists who Arning worked with during his illustrious career.

“The Many Faces of Bill Arning” is organized and curated by Scott Hug.

Announcement

Darrin Martin publishes article in Performance Matters

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin has recently published an article in the journal Performance Matters. Martin’s article,  “Audio Description as a Generative Process in Art Practice,” attempts to contextualize the practice of audio description in Darrin’s work and in other historical and contemporary examples of video art. 

Announcement

Darrin Martin in Recoding CripTech at SOMArts

Darrin Martin

Professor Darrin Martin is participating in the group show “Recoding CripTech” at SOMArts in San Francisco. This show will be on display from January 24 to February 25, 2020.

Post

Darrin Martin in UNSEEN
November 2, 2016

Darrin Martin

Tunesmith Luciano Chessa and artist Darrin Martin perform solo and collaborative moments through activating a selection of ancestral instruments to a sequined live video mix that embraces the abstraction of erotic display.  Sugar plum fairies bestow gifts in the ether through wireframe transmissions and muted receptions.   

Post

Darrin Martin in Human Commonalities
September 10-October 30, 2016

Darrin Martin

Darrin’s The Divide has been included in the exhibition “Human Commonalities” at the Moscow State Museum of Vadim Sidur, Russia in collaboration with V-A-C Foundation. “Human Commonalities” was curated by Anna Ilchenko.

Announcement

Darrin Martin in The Experimental Television Center: A History, ETC.

Darrin Martin

Darrin Martin’s “Monograph in Stereo” will be included in “The Experimental Television Center: A History, ETC . . .,” the first academic survey of the Upstate NY media arts residency.  The exhibition is held at the Hunter College Art Galleries in New York City.

Announcement

Darrin Martin at the Art & Design Gallery, University of Kansas

Darrin Martin

Through video, sculpture, print and multichannel installations, Darrin Martin’s “Iterations,” a solo exhibition at the Art & Design Gallery, explores the instability of the lens-based image as a reliable record of perception and memory. “Darrin’s conversations around technology, the body, accessibility and mediation are at the forefront of the contemporary conversations in the field,” said Benjamin Rosenthal, assistant professor of visual art and UC Davis alumni (MFA 2011).

Photo Gallery

Darrin Martin in ARK3: Workshop Scenarios
August 1, 2-5 pm
August 7, 6-9 pm
August 13, 6-9 pm
runs through August 22

Darrin Martin

ARK 3: The Workshop Scenarios is a variable installation and single channel video project collaboratively produced by Darrin Martin and Torsten Zenas Burns. The first part of the title takes its name from an obscure and short-lived children’s television series named Ark II from 1976 where a group of young scientists accompanied by a talking chimpanzee attempt to bring new hope to a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by pollution and waste.

Exhibition

Darrin Martin at Aggregate Space Gallery
Pattern Recognition

Darrin Martin

In his solo exhibition “Pattern Recognition,” Darrin Martin engages the synesthetic qualities of perception by exploring tactile, audible, and visual phenomena with sculpture, video and print-based installations. Contrasting current and archaic technologies, Martin constructs sound and image through performative and mechanical systems in order to analyze mediated experiences through complex physical forms.

Announcement

Darrin Martin in “Sounds of Silence”

Darrin Martin

Martin’s “Monograph in Stereo” screened as part of The Sounds of Silence curated by Steve Seid at Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley on February 28, 2013.

Announcement

Darrin Martin at Chicago Underground Film Festival

Darrin Martin

“The Casts” made its world premiere and won an Honorable Mention at the 20th Annual Chicago Underground Film Festival. “The Casts,” which was in the Shorts Program: It’s the Arts, screened on March 8, 2013.

Press release

Creative Ambition Runs High At 12th Annual UC Davis Film Festival

John Iacovelli Darrin Martin

The Davis Varsity Theatre presents the Department of Theatre and Dance’s 12th Annual UC Davis Film Festival, produced in association with UC Davis Cinema and Digital Media and co-sponsored by Art Studio. The festival of short films plays at the Davis Varsity Theatre Wednesday and Thursday, May 23-24, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 and $10, available at the Davis Varsity Theatre box office starting May 16.
 

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