I presented my research on the opening day of EVA as a part of the Research Workshop. This is the synopsis of the work I talked about.
The nature of this research is to analyse the creation and claim of intimate space through the navigation of the digital domain.
The project investigates through art practice ways in which technology can creatively record the human experience of feeling at home, while demonstrating identification with the I, or the self, set within the increasing complexities of navigating multifaceted identities in the wake of exponential social networking activity. It looks at how humans place themselves within the digital domain in order to assert a claim of intimate space.
This work has explored a ‘mash-up’ of web-based social networking platforms and consumer tools, devices and programmes that together generate visual information that is mapped and geo-located. It has looked at cybernetics in relation to the extension of the body through the machine, and computer programming as a means to understand what constitutes the building blocks of a computer generated image (CGI). Character development in SecondLife has been explored alongside performance that brought a SL avatar into reality. Special attention is given to multiplicity of identity, autobiography and the situation of displacement.
EVA 2008 London Conference
Electronic Visualisation and the Arts
Computer Arts Society BCS Specialist Group Event
22-24 July 2008
at The British Computer Society
5 Southampton Street, London WD2E 7HA
I spend a lot of time sitting at my computer... it seems to be the way I work, procrastinate and keep in touch with my family. In my research I have been looking at the 'transnational' and the idea of the portable-home. I used to feel like my backpack was a ball and chain as I carried my belongings from one place to the next. Now, I have a home and a family of my own in the UK and I carry my computer back and forth to Canada to see my biological family. While in Canada I re-visit the feeling of being 'at home', while I miss elements of my home in the UK. Once back in the UK I daydream about being back in Canada. For The Sandwich Box project during Wooloo.org. New Life Berlin, I filmed the experience of calling home from the city to the country. The lysthus provided my shelter, or my temporary home within the city. It represented a way to strip back from the comforts a house can offer and focus directly on the communication that makes me feel at home. Using TSB, various wires, a rogue internet signal, a laptop, and mobile phone, and other audio-visual equipment I can re-create “being at home” anywhere.
This work looks at the the fusion between the physical and cultural effects of operating within the digital domain. It parrallel's other research I am doing by demonstrating that electronic objects and social networking platforms can profoundly influence people's experience of their environment.
