random Musings #01
“… the overlay between the enacted and the represented bodies is no longer a natural inevitability but a contingent production, mediated by a technology that has become so entwined with the production of identity that it can no longer meaningfully be separated from the human subject To pose the question of “what can think” inevitably also changes, in a reverse feedback loop, the terms of “who can think.” Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics
Machine and human have begun to fold onto each other. In turn this has created what I refer to as, a ‘second skin’. It is through this new skin that we have begun to access memory and identity.
A possible end game to all this may be less dramatic than we had originally thought. For it is not the machine which will rise up to embrace and simulate the complex nuances which defines humanity, but the exact reverse. We will in turn succumb to the machine’s own limitations, adapting to its own vision and language of what it means to be human.
My work addresses such issues, that is, the proliferation and intervention of technology; mediated for the most part, by special interests groups which feed and entice us through slick packaging, marketing and our insatiable appetite to consume technologies. And it is with these seemingly innocent and benign technologies such as mp3 players, cell phones, game boys, social networking, and a whole sleuth of other web-based technologies that there now exists the possibility, to inadvertently delete our memory core, and initiate a corrosive viral entity which could deconstruct our social identity.
My practice in exploring these issues integrates aspects of these technologies within a non-hieratical, immersive and interactive installation environment. Formalistically, my work references a variety of artistic practices and techniques in order to simulate these issues. My work also looks at the overt and covert attributes of ‘form’, which act as catalysts in the dissemination of information through technology. Furthermore, critical to my practice is the understanding of the relational interplay between what is abstracted and represented and how this comes to define ‘form’ – which in turn defines the ‘real’ – or what we believe to be true through our experiencing.
I also see ‘form’ as performative and as such, it reveals itself in my work as a playful, yet sometimes exacting and trans-figurative element. Within this ‘form’ there are no definitive points of entry and/or hierarchical framework to anchor to, therefore allowing for a participatory, interpretive and interactive play with the viewer/participant.
Installation. 2009. University of Ottawa. Ottawa, Canada.
