Thursday, April 26, 2012

Fairy Series Artist Statement


Fairy Series - Artist Statement

I wanted to bring something unusual or unnatural to something that is natural. For example, a natural forest setting with a girl and make it unnatural by adding a ferocious tiger by her side and a mysterious mist.
The reality of the setting of the photographs is something someone wouldn’t normally think about, making the photographs themselves seem unnatural. A luscious ravine in the middle of a big bustling city such as Toronto; the two ideas do not make sense together but that is the reality, already giving the photographs a sense of fantasy. I wanted to enhance that fantasy aspect to create a contrasting parallel to what is real and possible to what isn’t. To what point can something not possibly exist? I wanted to play with the idea of imagination. If it looks real, perhaps with a little imagination, we can make it real. Each manipulation has a narrative that push your sense of imagination even further.

Fairy Series Documentation

Sources: 


Fairy - Glow

Fairy - Hideaway

Fairy - Risk

Fairy – Allure

Fairy Series

Glow
 Hideaway
 Risk
 Allure
Curious

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Truth Booth

 Group Project 1:
http://truthbooth.tumblr.com/

This is a photograph of how the truth booth looked when you entered the room - we hung two curtains around a desk that sat in the corner of the room and had a single beam of light to direct participants


We created a logo and poster for our "truth booth" and hung it on the door to the room that contained the truth booth to let people know where it was and to give the piece and identity.

 Inside the truth booth, behind the curtains was a confined space and a small, adorable teddy bear that encouraged people to tell him their secret - the sign above him notified the participant that anything said would be confidential.

 This is a photograph of a participant entering the truth booth room.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Why Things Matter Resposne

                Julian Bleecker, author of “Why Things Matter”, talks about the fascinating potential behind the idea of what he describes as “Blogjects”. According to Bleecker, Blogjects are literally physical objects with the capability of blogging. The idea is that blogging is complex and takes into account more than just simple facts or data. Once a physical object becomes connected to the internet it has the capacity to engage in the social exchange that exists and gains a higher status, defined by Bleecker as being a “first-class citizen” with which we can interact and communicate with.
Bleecker is suggesting a futuristic idea where objects exist, absent of artificial intelligence and strictly with the capacity to conjure a meaningful conversation with the networked online population. Currently, Blogjects do not exist, therefore making it a futuristic ideology. Bleecker gives examples of things that could potentially lead into this idea of Blogjects, called Spimes. The idea of a “Spime” was suggested by Bruce Sterling. The significance of a Spime is that it is a thing that can be searched, contains a history, has a known location, and has the ability to communicate with other things.
In his article, Bleecker gives us an example of a project done by Beatriz da Costa of a “Pigeon that Blogs”. A flock of pigeons have devices attached to them which can give them the ability to blog. They are given a GPS device for tracking their location, an environmental sensor, and a wireless internet connectivity device to have that information attainable in real time. These three things directly establish this project as being a flock of Spimes.  With the ability to locate the pigeons at any given time they will also have a recorded history of where they have been (using the GPS device), giving us the historical and location based aspects of a Spime. Having details of its location based history it makes it something searchable. We are able to go online and search in (for example) Google maps where those pigeons have been previously. The connectivity to the internet wirelessly gives the pigeons a chance to communicate with other things online by providing its GSP location data as well as the readings from the environmental sensor. In turn, it is the readings from those environmental sensors that give the pigeons meaning, like a Blogject would have. Although the pigeons may not be able to have a two-way conversation about their meaning, they are suggesting a path for which a conversation can take place among other “things” (or people). In combination with the other aspects of being a Spime (location, history, search) the idea of these environmental pollutants readings forces people to think about a topic and conjure a meaningful discussion around that topic. People would have a harder time thinking of a topic based solely on the environmental sensorial readings. If we can attach a location to those readings which we can track and search, we have something to compare and talk about, in contrast to just numerical readings that could exist anywhere.  
From my understanding, in his article, Bleecker suggests that a Blogject is something that has not yet been achieved or perfected. His idea seems to support the idea of a positive future if we, as artists, continue along this path of creating meaningful “Things” that don’t fall into the uncanny valley of a creepy robot.