‘Perfect (after John)’ reinterprets advertising stock footage into an infinitely looping single c... more ‘Perfect (after John)’ reinterprets advertising stock footage into an infinitely looping single channel video artwork. The work’s visual aesthetic is a reference to the oeuvre of conceptual artist John Baldessari and his recurring motif of collaging dots and coloured shapes over appropriated advertising imagery. By adopting this strategy and applying it to moving images, the work effectively visually ‘flattens’ the stereotypical poses of models found in advertising. Each section of the video depicts a different rotoscoped pose whose flattened layers warp and contort into smaller pieces that then reform into another pose. As a work of creative practice, the video explores how this transformational morphing, as well as the flattened visual aesthetic, can creatively emphasize the generic qualities of stock footage and critically reflect on the inherent ‘sameness’ of representational tropes found in advertising.
This chapter concludes on rating agencies and the global financial crisis. The active role of age... more This chapter concludes on rating agencies and the global financial crisis. The active role of agencies robbed them of their established image as putatively disinterested parties, exposing them to accusations and criticisms of partiality. However, agencies have thrived since the Enron Corporation crisis and demonstrated their renewed relevance during the European sovereign debt crisis that began in 2010. The exogenous approach to the crisis remains the dominant view as it shapes the collective understanding of the agencies' role during crisis. The chapter also explains the significance of social foundations views in understanding rating agencies. It includes how financial innovation could create issues. The chapter mentions that the enigma of rating will continue for years to come.
‘Climbing (4502-4000)’ is a multi-channel video installation that uses images appropriated from o... more ‘Climbing (4502-4000)’ is a multi-channel video installation that uses images appropriated from online real estate listings to create a ‘ladder’ of suburban homes that is scaled by a computer cursor. The work collapses the formal perspectives of each separate image by compositing the houses into a never-ending suburban surface. This flattening allows for the unfettered scrolling of the grasping skeuomorphic ‘hand’ cursor and evokes the experience of online shopping. Further, the homes are represented in geographical order, shifting from the artist’s childhood suburban postcode to the central CBD of Brisbane; the cursor navigating not just potential home ownership, but the varied demonstrations of class aspiration that these locales and facades can signify. The work’s formal qualities also allow for more nuanced and ambivalent understandings to emerge. As a seamless loop, the work expresses a cynicism toward the use of real estate as a tool for social mobility. Similarly, the visually dizzying experience of watching the horizonless pre- and post-renovation facades slide around and down each screen, reflects on the divergent experiences of home ownership experienced by different Australian generations. As a whole, the work functions as an absurd and exhausting depiction of engaging in the property market, in particular as a function of class. More broadly, it operates as an apt expression of one generation’s experience of late-capitalism, as well as a prompt for audiences to consider their own position and participation with that same system.
‘The Virtual Nation of Mammon’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line g... more ‘The Virtual Nation of Mammon’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line graph in polished brass. The source material for the work is drawn from data presented in economist Thomas Piketty’s book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ and its discussion of the continued world-wide rise of the billionaire class. This ‘virtual’ nation of globalised citizens has become the subject of increasing media attention as their wealth continues to grow in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. As a work of creative practice, ‘The Virtual Nation of Mammon’ takes the familiar formal device of the line graph and removes the labelled axes, rendering the lines technically meaningless, but in their essential form still ‘readable’. Abstracted from their original context, the lines themselves become symbolic narrative drawings. Together these line drawings tell the story of change over time; with only the work’s title, choice of material, and its austere presentation as prompts to the narrative’s details. In this distilled form, the work explores the potential of appropriation, abstraction, and de-contextualisation to act as critical drawing and sculptural strategies. It uses these approaches and the basic formal conventions of the line graph to suggest ambiguous narratives and in turn creatively respond to broader social and economic concerns.
This paper describes a practice-led methodology that combines contemporary art theory and process... more This paper describes a practice-led methodology that combines contemporary art theory and processes, as well as concepts of fan studies to construct a space for the critical and creative exploration of screen culture. The research promotes new possibilities for purposeful creative engagements with the screen, framed through the lens of what I term the digital-bricoleur. This performative, link-making approach documents the complicit tendencies that arise out of my affective relationship with screen culture, mapping out a cultural terrain in which I can creatively and critically 'play'. The creative exploitation of this improvisational and aleatory activity then forms the creative research outputs. It appropriates and reconfigures content from screen culture, creating digital video installations aimed at engendering new experiences and critical interpretations of screen culture.
‘A Stunning Experience’ pits Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman against each other in an infinite ... more ‘A Stunning Experience’ pits Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman against each other in an infinite interview. Through simple editing and compositing, both parties are rendered mute, positioned at either edge of a black void. The interviewer/interviewee dynamic is playfully reconfigured into an awkward exchange comprised entirely of blinks, breaths and head-nods. Accompanied by the sound of a curious and whispering studio audience, this wordless clash between the two talk show titans becomes emblematic of their infamous sixteen-year feud. The quasi-staring contest upends the cult of personality surrounding these iconic television hosts, while also creating and proposing a space for reflection upon the experiential and even meditative potential of watching television.
‘Conditions of Compromise and Failure (The Dickensian Aspect)' acts as a re-enactment of the ... more ‘Conditions of Compromise and Failure (The Dickensian Aspect)' acts as a re-enactment of the common trope of television detective dramas. A result of the artist’s repeated immersions in the television program ‘The Wire’, the work forms a node-map of all the named characters featured on the show. While each coloured thread represents and connects together the Byzantine narrative between all of the characters, the sheer mass of connections obfuscates any clear reading at all.
'Untitled (after Steven and John)' takes inspiration from Spielbergian tracking shots and... more 'Untitled (after Steven and John)' takes inspiration from Spielbergian tracking shots and Baldessarian collages to create ghostly apparitions that explore the affective power of the cinematic close up. By appropriating and obfuscating this common filmic convention, the work investigates the intersubjective potential of the moving image.
In 'Zarathustra’s Cave' the iconic apartment set from 90’s sitcom 'Seinfeld' is p... more In 'Zarathustra’s Cave' the iconic apartment set from 90’s sitcom 'Seinfeld' is presented devoid of actors or action of any kind. Instead the ‘apartment’ sits empty, accompanied by the ambient noise of the screen-space and the distant sound of city traffic. At irregular intervals this relative silence is punctuated by the laughter of an off-screen audience. Unprompted by any on-screen action, this spontaneous audience response ranges from raucous fits of cheering and applause to singular guffaws and giggles. The work is the product of a deep engagement with its subject matter, the result of countless hours of re-watching and editing to isolate the aural and visual spaces presented on the screen. In its resolute emptiness, the installation addresses the notion of narrative expectation. It creates a ‘nothing-space’, where a viewer can experientially oscillate between a sense of presence and absence, tension and pathos, or even between humour and existential crisis. The work was first exhibited in ‘NEW14’, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne.
In the post-truth climate, political campaigns like the US Elections and Brexit Referendum have d... more In the post-truth climate, political campaigns like the US Elections and Brexit Referendum have demonstrated how public opinion can be significantly manipulated by manufactured social media activity. The presence and impact of such activity in the Australian political landscape has been under-explored by artists, especially the campaign manipulation undertaken by political consultancy firms. ‘The ‘ideo-log’ Project’ uses an array of digital media to narratively reflect on the interfaces and personalities behind this digitally-affected politicking.‘The ‘ideo-log’ Project’ comprises an iPhone app, video, text, image, Twitter accounts, and various websites which together form the narrative of a conversation with an anonymous informant from a political consultancy firm. This leads the viewer on an investigative conspiratorial journey where the distinctions between fact and fiction become blurred. Centred around this mysterious iPhone app, the work presents what appears to be the technological residue of an insidious corporate experiment: a dis-information machine geared towards polarising political opinion, and manipulating social media activity. The app seems to gamify a Twitter conversation between rival think-tanks to trade algorithmically-generated insults, turning reductive political short-hand into a digital verbal sparring match. This work was selected by curator Anna Briers alongside significant international artists for the online exhibition ‘Conflict in my Outlook, We Met Online’ at the University of Queensland Art Museum. As one of the first major Australian institutional exhibitions to be staged online during COVID, the projects’ use of multimedia responded and adapted to this still-emerging context. The artwork was discussed in a review by Dr Louise Martin-Chew in ‘Art Guide Australia’, as well by Dr Alex Burchmore in ‘Art Monthly’. By late 2020, the exhibition website had received over 5000 visits, and is the first stage of a multi-year exhibition program
‘Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008’ renders an ethnographic-like study of Ho... more ‘Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008’ renders an ethnographic-like study of Hollywood celebrity as a cinematic experience. Viewers are presented with constantly mutating portraits that violently twist and shear into other faces, while an immersive soundscape echoes the turbulent painterly surface. Through technical processes of scaling, looping and image morphing; the work explores a positive affectual response to the seductive power of celebrity imagery. Conceptually, given Vanity Fair magazine’s prestigious stature, the work also performs an ethnographic-mapping of the popularity of Hollywood stars over time, while at the same time creating in-between, ‘mutant’ versions of their visages. The installation explores the potential for fan-based responses to pop culture to lead to artworks that enable a more critical response to the subjective and intersubjective dynamics of celebrity portraiture. Questions are raised about how these cultural forms impact pop culture fans, and their role in the mapping of culture and social experience.
Language is employed by banks around the world to communicate financial trends and attitudes and ... more Language is employed by banks around the world to communicate financial trends and attitudes and can translate into real-world capital ramifications. This use of language however, is often codified and delivered in ways that obscures its meaning from the general public, and which creates a tiered system of financial knowledge and wealth creation. ‘The bears have killed Goldilocks’ is a sculptural painting that creatively and critically examines this practice in the world of contemporary finance. The folded linen and acrylic work appropriates the phrase “In a crowded hall, exit doors are small” from a recent edition of the Royal Bank of Scotland investment newsletter. The use of this oddly provincial turn of phrase almost belied the alarmist advice the bank was communicating, but did indeed create a mini-panic in the world of investment banking. The painting liberates this sentence from its prosaic origins buried within an investment forecast, instead presenting it in thick and lustr...
‘The Past Devours the Future’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line gr... more ‘The Past Devours the Future’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line graph in stainless steel. The source material for the work is drawn from data presented in economist Thomas Piketty’s book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ and its discussion of rising wealth inequality in western democracies. Piketty’s research compiled historical evidence into a stark picture of the growth of such inequality and the resultant social inequality it engenders; that in essence, “the past devours the future”. As a work of creative practice, this artwork takes the familiar formal device of the line graph and removes the labelled axes, rendering the lines technically meaningless, but in their essential form still ‘readable’. Abstracted from their original context, the lines themselves become symbolic narrative drawings, telling a series of stories of change over time. At the same time, the work’s title, choice of material, and its austere presentation act as prompts to the underlying details of these narratives. In this distilled form, the work explores the potential of appropriation, abstraction, and de-contextualisation to act as critical drawing and sculptural strategies. It uses these approaches and the basic formal conventions of the line graph to suggest ambiguous narratives and in turn creatively respond to broader social and economic concerns.
‘Perfect (after John)’ reinterprets advertising stock footage into an infinitely looping single c... more ‘Perfect (after John)’ reinterprets advertising stock footage into an infinitely looping single channel video artwork. The work’s visual aesthetic is a reference to the oeuvre of conceptual artist John Baldessari and his recurring motif of collaging dots and coloured shapes over appropriated advertising imagery. By adopting this strategy and applying it to moving images, the work effectively visually ‘flattens’ the stereotypical poses of models found in advertising. Each section of the video depicts a different rotoscoped pose whose flattened layers warp and contort into smaller pieces that then reform into another pose. As a work of creative practice, the video explores how this transformational morphing, as well as the flattened visual aesthetic, can creatively emphasize the generic qualities of stock footage and critically reflect on the inherent ‘sameness’ of representational tropes found in advertising.
This chapter concludes on rating agencies and the global financial crisis. The active role of age... more This chapter concludes on rating agencies and the global financial crisis. The active role of agencies robbed them of their established image as putatively disinterested parties, exposing them to accusations and criticisms of partiality. However, agencies have thrived since the Enron Corporation crisis and demonstrated their renewed relevance during the European sovereign debt crisis that began in 2010. The exogenous approach to the crisis remains the dominant view as it shapes the collective understanding of the agencies' role during crisis. The chapter also explains the significance of social foundations views in understanding rating agencies. It includes how financial innovation could create issues. The chapter mentions that the enigma of rating will continue for years to come.
‘Climbing (4502-4000)’ is a multi-channel video installation that uses images appropriated from o... more ‘Climbing (4502-4000)’ is a multi-channel video installation that uses images appropriated from online real estate listings to create a ‘ladder’ of suburban homes that is scaled by a computer cursor. The work collapses the formal perspectives of each separate image by compositing the houses into a never-ending suburban surface. This flattening allows for the unfettered scrolling of the grasping skeuomorphic ‘hand’ cursor and evokes the experience of online shopping. Further, the homes are represented in geographical order, shifting from the artist’s childhood suburban postcode to the central CBD of Brisbane; the cursor navigating not just potential home ownership, but the varied demonstrations of class aspiration that these locales and facades can signify. The work’s formal qualities also allow for more nuanced and ambivalent understandings to emerge. As a seamless loop, the work expresses a cynicism toward the use of real estate as a tool for social mobility. Similarly, the visually dizzying experience of watching the horizonless pre- and post-renovation facades slide around and down each screen, reflects on the divergent experiences of home ownership experienced by different Australian generations. As a whole, the work functions as an absurd and exhausting depiction of engaging in the property market, in particular as a function of class. More broadly, it operates as an apt expression of one generation’s experience of late-capitalism, as well as a prompt for audiences to consider their own position and participation with that same system.
‘The Virtual Nation of Mammon’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line g... more ‘The Virtual Nation of Mammon’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line graph in polished brass. The source material for the work is drawn from data presented in economist Thomas Piketty’s book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ and its discussion of the continued world-wide rise of the billionaire class. This ‘virtual’ nation of globalised citizens has become the subject of increasing media attention as their wealth continues to grow in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. As a work of creative practice, ‘The Virtual Nation of Mammon’ takes the familiar formal device of the line graph and removes the labelled axes, rendering the lines technically meaningless, but in their essential form still ‘readable’. Abstracted from their original context, the lines themselves become symbolic narrative drawings. Together these line drawings tell the story of change over time; with only the work’s title, choice of material, and its austere presentation as prompts to the narrative’s details. In this distilled form, the work explores the potential of appropriation, abstraction, and de-contextualisation to act as critical drawing and sculptural strategies. It uses these approaches and the basic formal conventions of the line graph to suggest ambiguous narratives and in turn creatively respond to broader social and economic concerns.
This paper describes a practice-led methodology that combines contemporary art theory and process... more This paper describes a practice-led methodology that combines contemporary art theory and processes, as well as concepts of fan studies to construct a space for the critical and creative exploration of screen culture. The research promotes new possibilities for purposeful creative engagements with the screen, framed through the lens of what I term the digital-bricoleur. This performative, link-making approach documents the complicit tendencies that arise out of my affective relationship with screen culture, mapping out a cultural terrain in which I can creatively and critically 'play'. The creative exploitation of this improvisational and aleatory activity then forms the creative research outputs. It appropriates and reconfigures content from screen culture, creating digital video installations aimed at engendering new experiences and critical interpretations of screen culture.
‘A Stunning Experience’ pits Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman against each other in an infinite ... more ‘A Stunning Experience’ pits Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman against each other in an infinite interview. Through simple editing and compositing, both parties are rendered mute, positioned at either edge of a black void. The interviewer/interviewee dynamic is playfully reconfigured into an awkward exchange comprised entirely of blinks, breaths and head-nods. Accompanied by the sound of a curious and whispering studio audience, this wordless clash between the two talk show titans becomes emblematic of their infamous sixteen-year feud. The quasi-staring contest upends the cult of personality surrounding these iconic television hosts, while also creating and proposing a space for reflection upon the experiential and even meditative potential of watching television.
‘Conditions of Compromise and Failure (The Dickensian Aspect)' acts as a re-enactment of the ... more ‘Conditions of Compromise and Failure (The Dickensian Aspect)' acts as a re-enactment of the common trope of television detective dramas. A result of the artist’s repeated immersions in the television program ‘The Wire’, the work forms a node-map of all the named characters featured on the show. While each coloured thread represents and connects together the Byzantine narrative between all of the characters, the sheer mass of connections obfuscates any clear reading at all.
'Untitled (after Steven and John)' takes inspiration from Spielbergian tracking shots and... more 'Untitled (after Steven and John)' takes inspiration from Spielbergian tracking shots and Baldessarian collages to create ghostly apparitions that explore the affective power of the cinematic close up. By appropriating and obfuscating this common filmic convention, the work investigates the intersubjective potential of the moving image.
In 'Zarathustra’s Cave' the iconic apartment set from 90’s sitcom 'Seinfeld' is p... more In 'Zarathustra’s Cave' the iconic apartment set from 90’s sitcom 'Seinfeld' is presented devoid of actors or action of any kind. Instead the ‘apartment’ sits empty, accompanied by the ambient noise of the screen-space and the distant sound of city traffic. At irregular intervals this relative silence is punctuated by the laughter of an off-screen audience. Unprompted by any on-screen action, this spontaneous audience response ranges from raucous fits of cheering and applause to singular guffaws and giggles. The work is the product of a deep engagement with its subject matter, the result of countless hours of re-watching and editing to isolate the aural and visual spaces presented on the screen. In its resolute emptiness, the installation addresses the notion of narrative expectation. It creates a ‘nothing-space’, where a viewer can experientially oscillate between a sense of presence and absence, tension and pathos, or even between humour and existential crisis. The work was first exhibited in ‘NEW14’, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne.
In the post-truth climate, political campaigns like the US Elections and Brexit Referendum have d... more In the post-truth climate, political campaigns like the US Elections and Brexit Referendum have demonstrated how public opinion can be significantly manipulated by manufactured social media activity. The presence and impact of such activity in the Australian political landscape has been under-explored by artists, especially the campaign manipulation undertaken by political consultancy firms. ‘The ‘ideo-log’ Project’ uses an array of digital media to narratively reflect on the interfaces and personalities behind this digitally-affected politicking.‘The ‘ideo-log’ Project’ comprises an iPhone app, video, text, image, Twitter accounts, and various websites which together form the narrative of a conversation with an anonymous informant from a political consultancy firm. This leads the viewer on an investigative conspiratorial journey where the distinctions between fact and fiction become blurred. Centred around this mysterious iPhone app, the work presents what appears to be the technological residue of an insidious corporate experiment: a dis-information machine geared towards polarising political opinion, and manipulating social media activity. The app seems to gamify a Twitter conversation between rival think-tanks to trade algorithmically-generated insults, turning reductive political short-hand into a digital verbal sparring match. This work was selected by curator Anna Briers alongside significant international artists for the online exhibition ‘Conflict in my Outlook, We Met Online’ at the University of Queensland Art Museum. As one of the first major Australian institutional exhibitions to be staged online during COVID, the projects’ use of multimedia responded and adapted to this still-emerging context. The artwork was discussed in a review by Dr Louise Martin-Chew in ‘Art Guide Australia’, as well by Dr Alex Burchmore in ‘Art Monthly’. By late 2020, the exhibition website had received over 5000 visits, and is the first stage of a multi-year exhibition program
‘Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008’ renders an ethnographic-like study of Ho... more ‘Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008’ renders an ethnographic-like study of Hollywood celebrity as a cinematic experience. Viewers are presented with constantly mutating portraits that violently twist and shear into other faces, while an immersive soundscape echoes the turbulent painterly surface. Through technical processes of scaling, looping and image morphing; the work explores a positive affectual response to the seductive power of celebrity imagery. Conceptually, given Vanity Fair magazine’s prestigious stature, the work also performs an ethnographic-mapping of the popularity of Hollywood stars over time, while at the same time creating in-between, ‘mutant’ versions of their visages. The installation explores the potential for fan-based responses to pop culture to lead to artworks that enable a more critical response to the subjective and intersubjective dynamics of celebrity portraiture. Questions are raised about how these cultural forms impact pop culture fans, and their role in the mapping of culture and social experience.
Language is employed by banks around the world to communicate financial trends and attitudes and ... more Language is employed by banks around the world to communicate financial trends and attitudes and can translate into real-world capital ramifications. This use of language however, is often codified and delivered in ways that obscures its meaning from the general public, and which creates a tiered system of financial knowledge and wealth creation. ‘The bears have killed Goldilocks’ is a sculptural painting that creatively and critically examines this practice in the world of contemporary finance. The folded linen and acrylic work appropriates the phrase “In a crowded hall, exit doors are small” from a recent edition of the Royal Bank of Scotland investment newsletter. The use of this oddly provincial turn of phrase almost belied the alarmist advice the bank was communicating, but did indeed create a mini-panic in the world of investment banking. The painting liberates this sentence from its prosaic origins buried within an investment forecast, instead presenting it in thick and lustr...
‘The Past Devours the Future’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line gr... more ‘The Past Devours the Future’ is an artwork that appropriates and abstracts the form of a line graph in stainless steel. The source material for the work is drawn from data presented in economist Thomas Piketty’s book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ and its discussion of rising wealth inequality in western democracies. Piketty’s research compiled historical evidence into a stark picture of the growth of such inequality and the resultant social inequality it engenders; that in essence, “the past devours the future”. As a work of creative practice, this artwork takes the familiar formal device of the line graph and removes the labelled axes, rendering the lines technically meaningless, but in their essential form still ‘readable’. Abstracted from their original context, the lines themselves become symbolic narrative drawings, telling a series of stories of change over time. At the same time, the work’s title, choice of material, and its austere presentation act as prompts to the underlying details of these narratives. In this distilled form, the work explores the potential of appropriation, abstraction, and de-contextualisation to act as critical drawing and sculptural strategies. It uses these approaches and the basic formal conventions of the line graph to suggest ambiguous narratives and in turn creatively respond to broader social and economic concerns.
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Papers by Daniel McKewen