SpekWork Studio
Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll are SpekWork Studio, making art about work and play through virtual and augmented reality, video games, and printed matter. Recent projects include the virtual reality app “Intern Purgatory” exhibited with Rhizome and the New Museum (NY) in 2020, and their augmented reality comic book “Escape from Intern Purgatory” published by Eyelevel Gallery (Halifax) in 2021. They live and work near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People.
twitter: @spekwork
instagram: @spekwork
Escape from Intern Purgatory
Enter the world of Tough Guy Mountain with this augmented reality comic book! Visit the Brandscape, start your unpaid internship, and fall straight off the corporate ladder to the bottom of the chasm of Tough Guy Mountain corporation. Be exalted by executives, hang out with holograms at the water cooler, and become a part of the story through the accompanying augmented reality app. Combining risograph printing with augmented reality, Escape from Intern Purgatory is a novel ride through a hyper-capitalist fantasy.
Text by Iain Soder, illustrations by Cat Bluemke, and programming by Jonathan Carroll. Printed by SpekWork Studio.
Published by Eyelevel Gallery in a limited edition of 150. 115 pages, two-colour risograph print, 8” x 5.5” x ¾”
SpekWork Print
SpekWork Studio has an RZ220UI with a rotating selection of ink colours. They are open to collaborating with artists and arts organizations looking to create posters, prints, and zines. Various in-house finishing options are available including saddle-stitch and comb-binding.
Email studio@spek.work to get your project started!