A recent article in the New Yorker about the composer, Paul Simon, reflects a little expressed bu... more A recent article in the New Yorker about the composer, Paul Simon, reflects a little expressed but strongly held attitude amongst artists. The writer, Alec Wilkinson, quotes Simon talking about work he felt compelled to compose that was not marketable. The voice reprimanding him had the tone of an Old Testament figure. "'This is Judgment Day, and there's no defense,' it announced. 'I'm going to tell you a deep truth, and you're are going to listen. You made this thing that you received partly as a gift, and you took it immediately to the marketplace without sufficiently appreciating it. And when you intuited that the marketplace wasn't going to accept it you knew right away that you had no business taking such a thing there. The gift was the point.'" (Wilkinson, p.64) So it was a real 'aha' moment for me when I was reading Clive Dilnot's article, The Gift. He speaks of the gift as a crucial economic factor, psychological implication and historical tenet. He looks at design and creation through the lens of the gift. Here were very real reasons why so many artists feel conflict around valuing art within the constraints of market economy definitions. Continuing on and reading classics in gift giving literature, Mauss' The Gift, Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies and Hyde's The Gift, Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, the complexity and depth of the issue was driven home I had originally understood some of what I read within the context of the quilt making traditions I was familiar with. Often quilters have said to me that they won't sell their work but would rather give it away. There is also a very strong tradition of creating community quilts for raffle or donation to various causes. A project I started along with two other artists, Mary Corcoran and Judith Dingle, called 'The Quilt Project' was an ongoing commitment to make quilts for comfort and decoration for various agencies, for example, a women's shelter, an aids hospice and a breast cancer research facility. Any suggestion of direct benefit, financial or notoriety, from being involved in 'The Quilt Project' was uncomfortable and diminished the activity for me, and I believe for the others as well. Naturally, feminist critique comes to mind immediately when talking about quilting, gift giving and women. Issues of socialization and demeaning of women's labour comes into play when talking about the thorny issue of giving instead of being paid. Volunteerism and socialized response have long been problematic for women. For some deeper understanding of these issues I turned to Rozsika Parker and her writings in The Subversive Stitch and an essay by Susan E. Bernick, A Quilt Is an Art Object when It Stand Up like a Man. I also interviewed quilters to listen with a more informed perspective to what they had to say about gift giving.
This visual essay introduces and describes an IOS app that is currently in development. The app i... more This visual essay introduces and describes an IOS app that is currently in development. The app is based on an ongoing project Pillflowers (2004–present), an aesthetic response to the prevalent use of pharmaceuticals in North American society. Pills and tablets make up the petals of flowers that create 200 mandala-like designs. The essay details the five functions of the app that are either created or in process – grow, gather, play, dream and gift. An analysis and associated images for each function round out the text.
This article investigates the body, embodiment, augmented, virtual reality (AR/VR) and the virtua... more This article investigates the body, embodiment, augmented, virtual reality (AR/VR) and the virtual sublime. Through AR/VR one negotiates virtual worlds, often with a feeling of endless possibility and sublimity. This experience can lead to the danger of being swallowed up by the sublime. However, instead of being confronted by nature and the immensity of the skies, the virtual sublime references technology, infinitely zooming into microscopic and atomic structures, yet still shaking our sense of our world. The concepts of virtuality, digital materiality, the analogue/digital divide, an AR/VR spectrum, essentialism, sensorial sensuality and avatar instantiation will be explored, concluding with an analysis of the senses and the natural extension of sensorial engagement—affect. This article proposes that the heightened sensations of an AR/VR encounter lend themselves to the sublime. However, the deficit of AR/VR sensuality due to truncated sensorial input leads to feelings of disaffec...
Review of: Morality by Design: Technology’s Challenge to Human Values, Wade Rowland (2019)Bristol... more Review of: Morality by Design: Technology’s Challenge to Human Values, Wade Rowland (2019)Bristol: Intellect, 120 pp.,ISBN 978-1-78938-1-238, p/bk, $24
This text describes, illustrates and theorizes the creation of a virtual reality (VR) landscape/g... more This text describes, illustrates and theorizes the creation of a virtual reality (VR) landscape/game/sojourn, titled One for Sorrow, an artwork that seeks to confound the dichotomies between hand and digital making and the illusion of two dimensionality versus three dimensionality. This text also describes the making process as a way to position and trouble the translation of the handmade into the digital using collage, assemblage and montage along with craft theory. Although ostensibly a first-person puzzle game, the experience uses the old nursery rhyme One for Sorrow to entice the player to explore and discover, not necessarily mixed realities, but rather, mixed sensibilities-2D/3D, hand/algorithm, drawn/photographic. Digital and handmade aesthetics, coupled with considered sound design and narrative, can evoke an immersive experience (Kwastek 2013) and provide an unorthodox model for VR art.
New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds, 2015
This chapter traces a process of creating using found object collage, through collecting/consumin... more This chapter traces a process of creating using found object collage, through collecting/consuming practices and finally to the notion of the bought self, avatar representation through consumerist artistic practice in Second Life (SL) the online, user generated, virtual environment. Positioning collage as a reinvigorated current in art, the text couples this mode of making with shopping as found object. Collaboration is inherent in an online virtual world, where programmers, designers and other content providers determine the parameters of what is possible. Found object/shopping is a synergistic fit with the nature of predetermined boundaries coupled with late-stage capitalism. This mode of self-making encourages the idea of buying identification through the construction of an avatar. Through a review of the practices of the Situationists, an aesthetic turn in political tactics is revealed through contemporary art making. The text uses the author's own virtual/material practice as a case study for the theories explored.
A recent article in the New Yorker about the composer, Paul Simon, reflects a little expressed bu... more A recent article in the New Yorker about the composer, Paul Simon, reflects a little expressed but strongly held attitude amongst artists. The writer, Alec Wilkinson, quotes Simon talking about work he felt compelled to compose that was not marketable. The voice reprimanding him had the tone of an Old Testament figure. "'This is Judgment Day, and there's no defense,' it announced. 'I'm going to tell you a deep truth, and you're are going to listen. You made this thing that you received partly as a gift, and you took it immediately to the marketplace without sufficiently appreciating it. And when you intuited that the marketplace wasn't going to accept it you knew right away that you had no business taking such a thing there. The gift was the point.'" (Wilkinson, p.64) So it was a real 'aha' moment for me when I was reading Clive Dilnot's article, The Gift. He speaks of the gift as a crucial economic factor, psychological implication and historical tenet. He looks at design and creation through the lens of the gift. Here were very real reasons why so many artists feel conflict around valuing art within the constraints of market economy definitions. Continuing on and reading classics in gift giving literature, Mauss' The Gift, Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies and Hyde's The Gift, Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, the complexity and depth of the issue was driven home I had originally understood some of what I read within the context of the quilt making traditions I was familiar with. Often quilters have said to me that they won't sell their work but would rather give it away. There is also a very strong tradition of creating community quilts for raffle or donation to various causes. A project I started along with two other artists, Mary Corcoran and Judith Dingle, called 'The Quilt Project' was an ongoing commitment to make quilts for comfort and decoration for various agencies, for example, a women's shelter, an aids hospice and a breast cancer research facility. Any suggestion of direct benefit, financial or notoriety, from being involved in 'The Quilt Project' was uncomfortable and diminished the activity for me, and I believe for the others as well. Naturally, feminist critique comes to mind immediately when talking about quilting, gift giving and women. Issues of socialization and demeaning of women's labour comes into play when talking about the thorny issue of giving instead of being paid. Volunteerism and socialized response have long been problematic for women. For some deeper understanding of these issues I turned to Rozsika Parker and her writings in The Subversive Stitch and an essay by Susan E. Bernick, A Quilt Is an Art Object when It Stand Up like a Man. I also interviewed quilters to listen with a more informed perspective to what they had to say about gift giving.
This visual essay introduces and describes an IOS app that is currently in development. The app i... more This visual essay introduces and describes an IOS app that is currently in development. The app is based on an ongoing project Pillflowers (2004–present), an aesthetic response to the prevalent use of pharmaceuticals in North American society. Pills and tablets make up the petals of flowers that create 200 mandala-like designs. The essay details the five functions of the app that are either created or in process – grow, gather, play, dream and gift. An analysis and associated images for each function round out the text.
This article investigates the body, embodiment, augmented, virtual reality (AR/VR) and the virtua... more This article investigates the body, embodiment, augmented, virtual reality (AR/VR) and the virtual sublime. Through AR/VR one negotiates virtual worlds, often with a feeling of endless possibility and sublimity. This experience can lead to the danger of being swallowed up by the sublime. However, instead of being confronted by nature and the immensity of the skies, the virtual sublime references technology, infinitely zooming into microscopic and atomic structures, yet still shaking our sense of our world. The concepts of virtuality, digital materiality, the analogue/digital divide, an AR/VR spectrum, essentialism, sensorial sensuality and avatar instantiation will be explored, concluding with an analysis of the senses and the natural extension of sensorial engagement—affect. This article proposes that the heightened sensations of an AR/VR encounter lend themselves to the sublime. However, the deficit of AR/VR sensuality due to truncated sensorial input leads to feelings of disaffec...
Review of: Morality by Design: Technology’s Challenge to Human Values, Wade Rowland (2019)Bristol... more Review of: Morality by Design: Technology’s Challenge to Human Values, Wade Rowland (2019)Bristol: Intellect, 120 pp.,ISBN 978-1-78938-1-238, p/bk, $24
This text describes, illustrates and theorizes the creation of a virtual reality (VR) landscape/g... more This text describes, illustrates and theorizes the creation of a virtual reality (VR) landscape/game/sojourn, titled One for Sorrow, an artwork that seeks to confound the dichotomies between hand and digital making and the illusion of two dimensionality versus three dimensionality. This text also describes the making process as a way to position and trouble the translation of the handmade into the digital using collage, assemblage and montage along with craft theory. Although ostensibly a first-person puzzle game, the experience uses the old nursery rhyme One for Sorrow to entice the player to explore and discover, not necessarily mixed realities, but rather, mixed sensibilities-2D/3D, hand/algorithm, drawn/photographic. Digital and handmade aesthetics, coupled with considered sound design and narrative, can evoke an immersive experience (Kwastek 2013) and provide an unorthodox model for VR art.
New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds, 2015
This chapter traces a process of creating using found object collage, through collecting/consumin... more This chapter traces a process of creating using found object collage, through collecting/consuming practices and finally to the notion of the bought self, avatar representation through consumerist artistic practice in Second Life (SL) the online, user generated, virtual environment. Positioning collage as a reinvigorated current in art, the text couples this mode of making with shopping as found object. Collaboration is inherent in an online virtual world, where programmers, designers and other content providers determine the parameters of what is possible. Found object/shopping is a synergistic fit with the nature of predetermined boundaries coupled with late-stage capitalism. This mode of self-making encourages the idea of buying identification through the construction of an avatar. Through a review of the practices of the Situationists, an aesthetic turn in political tactics is revealed through contemporary art making. The text uses the author's own virtual/material practice as a case study for the theories explored.
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