The Memorial Union Gallery, in partnership with the Department of Visual Arts, is displaying student artists in an exhibit entitled “Hysterical Sublime.”

The exhibit, which has been running since December 17, comes to a close this upcoming Thursday. It showcases photography and digital media students’ work.

A closing reception will be hosted at the Memorial Union Gallery to recognize the excellent and thoughtful work of North Dakota State’s student artists. The closing reception will take place from 5p.m. to 7 p.m., with an artist talk at 5:15 p.m.

The NDSU Visual Arts advanced photography and digital media program artists were tasked with exploring how we interpret, access and digest information.

“Each of the artists here are interpreting data in very interesting ways, often-nonlinear ways, but they do it in a very sophisticated and compelling way that tells a deeper story,” says Anthony Faris, Memorial Union Gallery coordinator and curator of collections.

The work can be viewed at face value, but the joy and experience comes from the underlying messages each piece of art conveys. When encapsulated with any of the work, an exchange of information with the viewer takes place giving the exhibit a surreal interactive quality.

In this way, the student artists accomplish their goal by inspiring further information to be transferred between viewer and art.

“These have that sort of interactive quality to it; they are interacting with places, spaces, people and information,” Faris said, “in a way that we are trying to figure out a way a person can relate to those inanimate things.”

The “Hysterical Sublime” exhibit as a whole has a fantastical quality to it. By transferring information that is otherwise intangible and invisible to the viewer to visual form, the world we are constantly interacting in has another facet to it that is brought to light.

In an age where technology is increasingly prevalent, it is refreshing to see such inspiration drawn from it.

“Hysterical Sublime” beautifully demonstrates the dynamic relationship and contrast between technology and nature.

“There is an order to nature, but it’s sort of beyond our ability to really understand how nature is organized, so nature is considered the sublime. Hysterical sublime is like looking at our information age,” Faris said.

“We try to make some sense out of it but we really can’t.”

The Hysterical Sublime exhibition features the artwork of the following student artists: Josh Barduson, Batbold Battseren, Emily Beaman, Shelby Biffert, Ty Bloom, Chelsea Burgan, Hillary Ehlen, Laura Gish, Ana Guttromson, Derek Hatzenbuhler, Logan Macrae, Taylor Markel, Elli Minette, Nathan Mulske, Grace Olson, Nicholas Reitan, Samantha Schmoker, Kiley Smith, Jenna Thorson, Christopher Tomkinson and Christopher White. The digital media and advanced photography faculty include Peter Atwood and Meghan Kirkwood.