"Allegory of Light" performed at PAX Miami (Art Basel week)

Friday night during Art Basel in Miami this year, I performed on the main stage at PAX Miami (Performing Arts Exchange Miami) as part of the group show titled "Informal Correspondence", curated by my good friend Joey Meyer, currently undertaking his MFA at Miami University.

"Allegory of Light" was an analog version of the software program Photoshop, where my body was the cursor (the index of human interaction with technology) and the stage was the file window in which I worked. The stage or "window" was lined from front to back with layers of color and varying transparencies, through the use of plastic and wax materials. I projected video onto the screen in back of all the layers, which was a video I created in AfterEffects that contained duplicates of myself painting on a wall in a room, going back and forth through time both dressed as Birth and as Death. During the performance, the cursor (me) would move throughout the layers and cut away shapes and pieces.

"Allegory of Light" was fully video-taped. Typically I post all my performance footage online, however, my camera was stolen that night, and so I've got these fancy iPhone photos instead.

"Agua" aired in Denver LED billboard exhibition

My video "Agua" was included in Denver's very first LED billboard art show, "Frame of Mind", a video and motion-based art exhibition that took place on the brand new LED screen at the corner of 14th and Champa St. in downtown Denver. The exhibition was  presented by the Denver Theatre District and the Downtown Denver Partnership, and curated by Ivar Zeile of Plus Gallery.

Video footage was filmed specifically for the Denver billboard exhibit while in Asheville, NC... Asheville being my new residence for working on art projects and playing in the woods. I used keyboard symbols to create an emoticon for water. Denver is a very dry place in the summer. This video was created for Denver, with hopes to spread a meme of hydration (drought reduction) through the minds that viewed it over time, as they passed by the billboard from day to day.

You can kind of make out the video here, at 1:11.

Bloodlines, Emmanuel Gallery, 12/2/2010

Bloodlines was a multimedia performance where I utilized video art, sound and performance with drawing utensils. It was originally written up as a short play with four acts, and then modified into a 30 minute performance art piece.

Performance took place at Emmanuel Gallery on Auraria Campus in Denver, CO.

Special thanks to LOGOS (Asheville, NC) for his expertise in sound engineering, and Steve Gottshall (Denver, CO) for event photography.

"Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" BFA Thesis

At the Center for Visual Art in Denver, CO.

Thesis Statement  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Digital communication, textual and pictorial, is the daily bread of contemporary life in a techno-enthused society. In "Global Proposal for a New Emoticon", the relationship between the psyche and digital expression (YouTube) is explored through contemporary art practices (performance, video, and installation). The use of a YouTube channel as medium provides an intentional documentation on modern-day narcissism, and the failings of "instant gratification" digital expression.

Where there is a limitation of language, there is a void of expression. My installation is a large sculptural environment that reflects this concept, and is designed to house a performer (myself). I use my body in my art as a tool for pictorial narrative and a vehicle for complex emotive expression. Until an object-body becomes a subject-body, the body will only ever be acted upon by outside forces. Once the body realizes its objecthood, it becomes a subject and can thus begin acting upon its environment. Through the act of food preparation, where a kitchen becomes a metaphor for activity, the performer becomes an agent of creation. Through the act of attempting to consume these foods while watching television, the performer becomes an agent of consumption, where the living room is a metaphor for passivity. Through the binaries of participation and spectatorship, technology is convicted in a case against digital communication dependence. Sherry Turkle - writer, professor, psychologist, and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self - writes about technology and its psychological effects upon the human mind/spirit, especially regarding the internet, the personality, and the culture of instant gratification. We are now living in a culture where the instant gratification from communicating feelings through online experiences becomes dangerous; the danger is in having become dependent upon technology for the expression and edification of feelings.

As I blindly consume the "food" of my habitat, I reveal a relationship between being "logged on" to the internet while being "checked out" from my immediate surroundings (my own reception). I chose to work in a medium fit for the job: a YouTube channel. I uploaded 400 of my own home videos over a year's time. By using my own life as a subject, I critique the culture of "uploading the self", of instant gratification, and narcissism. With a stockpile of hundreds of videos, I created two works of video art for my thesis performance (one as wall projection and one as television programming), and designed a new emoticon after scrupulously analyzing the visual data. From this data, I formulated a ratio of mind-spirit-body 'incidences' based off of each video's predominant content, and that ratio mathematically informed the design of the new emoticon. The three parts of the ratio were the basis of the three structural components of the new emoticon, 'psychospiritual transformation.' The emoticon is itself an absurdity that aims to point to the current flatness that our primitive technology suffers from. The post-performance remnants will be on display throughout the exhibition, and serve as the trace of a psychospiritual, transformative act against emptiness in all its forms.

"Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" considers how technology may or may not evolve to meet the needs of the human psyche that is evolving along side it, and if and when digital communication could ever match the complexity and efficiency of tens of thousands of years in human body language. By employing my body in my art, I choose complexity over simplicity. I point to the sterility of the contemporary 'white cube' gallery, and the lifelessness of art out of context from life in general. In a state of questioning and re-examining what is important in art and culture, I utilize parody as a tool for that questioning. I seriously question the addictive, sedentary nature of a culture consumed in ever-increasing digital worlds; the trademark of the twenty-first century is an obsessive consumption of emptiness, which goes hand in hand with the hyper-institutionalization of art. We are here to change this. It's up to us to fill the void of emptiness; to embed our imprints in all we do. How else can the digital take its course into a hopeful future? The future is bright, indeed...

Irrationally Logical Process  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Golden Ratio of the Self: 

Mining the Video-Journal Data for an Archetype 
of PsychoSpiritual Transformation and It's Visual Expression

New Emoticon:

((()))[oø/]((())) 

1st element: psycho (mind) 

(((o)))

2nd element: spiritual (spirit)

)))o(((

3rd element: transformation (body)

[oø/]

mind:spirit:body ratio = 15:13:12  

where 15:13:12 is the basic expression of relationship of the 3 components above, as mined and identified over the course of reviewing 400 instances of daily routine (the video-stock YouTube channel)

 

psycho - short for psychological, or mental processes 
act of will; ego; vibrational 'outward' energy expression (not an object) 

ex:  "(((o)))" where o = object/body
 

spiritual - long word for spirit, or spiritual beliefs or experiences
act of service; subservience or non-ego; vibrational 'inward' energy expression (not an object)   

ex:  ")))o(((" where o = object/body
 

transformation - to transform 
verbs (actions) need bodies (nouns): all physical bodies transform (molecules, eg.) and all non-physical bodies transform (thoughts, eg.), therefore, bodies of material and bodies of knowledge do transform over time; stagnant 'objects', or bodies, are either acted upon or act upon another body 

ex:  "[oø/]" where [ ] indicates a unified body; a message; a strand of imprints that communicate the nature of the whole body and where oø/ = transformation 
*the transformation symbol was created through a series of logical visual steps (circle, circle plus slash, slash minus circle)

A unified body [ ] may also stand for o where o = object, thus psychological transformation can be written as ((([oø/]))), spiritual transformation can be written as )))[oø/](((, and psychospiritual transformation can be written as ((()))[oø/]((())). The new emoticon places the spiritual inward-energy parentheses around the first layer of the unified body and it places the psychological outward-energy parentheses around in a second layer. Thus the new emoticon is built with both visual symmetry (outward mind, inward spirit) and linear symbology (a transforming body).

Special thanks to John David Davenport (Denver, CO) for event photography.

Video compositing; psychological states & circumstances

     Finished the first and most important part of my thesis (Global Proposal for a New Emoticon) which is the 400-video stockpile of daily banalities captured via web cam. (Okay it's at 399, but I am kind of having anxiety about the last video, so give me a minute). Next step is to merge them into one massive video mosaic. FUN! (Or headache?)

     Been reviewing the footage every month or so since the project began last November. It's as if the psyche sees everything before we do, acts on everything before we do, knows everything that's about to happen before we do.

     The videos are part of a multi-sensory experience constructed from video documentation of growth and development within my own psyche from the last 7 months. Self as study.

     On another note...

     ...I picked up my Jung books recently. Better than even the thickest of his original writings and concepts, is Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961. Here, Jung was talking about the end of his mandala period.

"The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life-- in them everything essential was decided. It all began then; the later details are only supplements and clarifications of the material that burst forth from the unconscious, and at first swamped me. It was the prima materia for a lifetime's work."

From video journals to painting the icons of a new religion...

         An ongoing video art project that should take me well into half of the year 2010, "Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" (working title) will address issues of human adaptability in an increasingly techno-based socio-cultural experience that marks the 21st century as a cybernetic one. Out of the cold emptiness that is satellite, networked connectivity... comes the emergence of new symbols and icons that are rapidly being downloaded into the collective psyche. From a realm where nothing is real, symbols are born into the real, and then recycle themselves again and again back into the unreal, until eventually all symbols are an untraceable mix of culture, technology, science, politics, religion and human emotion... the latter of which is the area of interest that I base this video project upon. 

         Out of context and out of place, many of the daily uploads on the project's YouTube channel - underscoreblank - are intensely personal, while others are over-generalized, banal daily experiences. A further description of the project can be read about in the "About Me" section on the channel's homepage. The culmination of about 400 video uploads will result in one final video painting... a didactic icon that moves with the times.

         I am very concerned about transparency in art production and exhibiting, and this informs my rationale behind my commitment to keeping my process public and available to everyone (everyone with an internet connection, hardware and software... that is). Process is the bulk of the message - both psychological and technical - and the final product, an index that points to it.

         Keep up with me on my channel, or just wait for the exhibition in 2010. 

_c0da: Colorado Digital Art

So, my latest NERDA endeavor is the _c0da show opening up this week at Object + Thought. Thanks to Ryan Pattie for fantastic flyer design. We were scheduled to open to the public on Wednesday morning, but with the snow and a few more tasks with projectors, the show may open mid-day, although visitors will not be turned away... just a matter of tidying some video up.

We've been planning this event for months and we're finally glad it's on it's way to being seen. I can't believe how much work is involved in producing and designing a show... even when you have jurors to choose the work for you. It's still conceptually a lot of work, and I have learned SO much from this process. I finally have been able to use my gallery skills outside of work and school, and I hope we have a packed reception.

The _c0da show is representing artists from MSCD, CU Boulder, UCCS, UCD and RMCAD. I really hope to put together more shows like this again, creating place for art students to have a discussion in the way that they know best. I think it makes much more sense to get your work off campus and see it up, and only then can you really talk about it and get feedback. The classroom is terribly limiting when it comes to critique, in my opinionated opinion.

At least in the gallery the discussion can be done over beers. The mind needs proper lubrication for contemplation. The MCA was giving members each a free drink with the B+ Lectures and I think that's some damn good planning.

I also have a video work in the show as well, a remix of an older work I did in 2008. In a way, the video makes more sense as a remix.

Friday we'll be handing out hilarious awards, too, and celebrating all things NERDA.

A Motley Effort gets review...

The installation that Melannie and I collaborated on - called Wombtomb - as part of a warehouse installation show through Metro State Sculpture Department on First Friday in October, got posted up at denverarts.org. Check it out.

photo by Susan Porteous Evans

photo by Steve Gottshall

It is hard to see from these photos, but the electrical/network cables were attached to the inside of the cast and extended out to the eggs on the side walls.

The animated video I built was 4 minutes long with audio that Melannie provided, and it looped seamlessly. Three candles in a triangle pattern were placed on the floor near the cast. We also had a space heater in the room, to render the warmth of the womb.

Wombtomb was inspired from Donna Haraway's book Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, especially the essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,"

Additional inspiration was taken from several lengthy entries in a hefty book by Barbara Walker called The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, including the entries: womb, cave, wine, menses, salt, and honey. This is an insanely researched encyclopedia that I recommend everyone read.

Video documentary is being put together for both my solo project from the last installation show in May (see my earlier post on Steady Decline: New Religion) and for this last collaborative project. I don't post any of my video work / digital work online in photo-sharing networks or on blogs. I prefer to own my work. I do put up some analog works, such as wet photography, painting and drawing.

When my official website is up and running, you'll be able to see my portfolio there. This blog is for writing and learning about visual art - both my own and the works of others.

Thank you for reading.

Where We Meet

Empty Orchestra was a mutlimedia performance night at the Center for Visual Art that was concepted by Rebecca Dolan and created by individual artists studying at Metro State in the digital art program... specifically, students undertaking Video Art II. Performances ranged from spoken word to sing-alongs to rap to more traditional, narrative performance.

Mine was sort of an anti-performance, addressing the anxiety and incompatability of pigment and video. In a private performance at my home, I filmed my hand painting over canvas that led to an old television set (on and off) which eventually got painted over as well, and I poured paint onto a black dress. The documentation of the performance was then edited and further manipulated, and turned into the video backdrop to the performance I did at the CVA, "Where We Meet." I wore the same dress.

As the video (with sound) played I had Melannie hold a roll of green duct tape for me so that I could wrap myself in it. Once I was bound (ran out of tape a bit early... you'd think those rolls are longer than they are) I stood at the microphone and proceeded to laboriously breathe. I'd planned for a large amount of time for only my breath to be heard (I was taped up at the mouth), but I did not plan to be strangled at the neck like I was (bound myself a little too tightly). I struggled to breathe, the air from my nostrils loud and amplified. I held my breath for a while for a break but then I realized that passing out - although a potentially nice touch to my piece about struggling between old and new media - probably wasn't a good idea with electronics and expensive equipment sitting at my feet.

Video stills from Where We Meet

 

Multimedia performance Steady Decline (New Religion), 2009

The fully installed church, located in a warehouse for the Antithesis Exhibition on May 1, 2009, was a piece that explored the repercussions of addictions to online social networking sites through the lens of instituionalized religious practices. Video projections involved animated emoticons (icons) interspersed with snapshots of my facebook contacts' status updates. I did 4 different performances/rituals throughout the opening night - mostly appropriated from my memory of Catholic mass as a child - where I paid homage to the icons/emoticons/prophets of a new religion, blessed myself and the church-goers with water, beer, bubbles, silly string, pringles, and candy. Gregorian chanting played in the church throughout the night.

: \

Video stills from Steady Decline (New Religion)

There were two videos projected onto large white screens (fabric) on left and right of the altar in the front of the installation/church environment. These were some of the icons that built and animated in After Effects for the projections, which also included facebook status updates from my contacts. The videos themselves, as a relic of the performance, are jointly titled "Icons of A New Religion."