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Embracing Chaos
For several years I have been
looking to chaos theory as a source of relevant metaphors for understanding the nature of conciousness and culture, as well as for critiquing and making art. Following on the lines of investigation of
"A Life of Its Own"
and a talk I gave at at ISEA98 in Manchester, I've written a short essay that
advocates embracing
the precepts of chaos theory in cultural practice and art making. It is entitled Embracing Chaos.
My most recent source of inspiration in formulating a practical application for these theories
are the writings of TR Young. |
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Recursive Elements
Here's a chaos inspired page utilizing recursive framesets to produce unpredicable
graphic compositions in the browser window. The theme of the piece is based on the idea that
each the four classical elements contains the three others. The composition is based on
an approximation of the Golden Section (thinking of you Lynda S.). I realize now that there are actually
five elements, so you can consider the web to be ether.
Check out
"Recursive Elements" |
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"A Life of Its Own"
In November '97 Catherine and I had a piece in a show that I co-curated with
Norman White. The show of
robotic art was entitled "A Life of Its Own".
It opened at the gallery of the Multimedia Center at the Centro Nacional de las
Artes in Mexico City on on October 30 '97 and ran until November 30th. The
pieces in the exhibition are:
The Wanderer by
David Rokeby,
Sticks by Doug Back,
Autarky by
Catherine Orfald and myself,
Facing Out Laying Low by
Norman White, and
Fingerprints of Birth of Essence
by Robert Erlich
are presenting works demonstrating the principle of self organising
complex systems -- the emergence of order from chaos. The show was sponsored by
NAFAA
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"Navigating Non-linear Narratives"
In May '96 I chaired a panel called "Navigating Non-linear Narratives" as part of the
<CLIK-TOK> programme of the Images Festival. It was really interesting to hear four
such diverse approaches to multi-media authoring as
Vera Frenkel, Robert Ouellette, Steve Reinke, and
Kika Thorne.
"Net@Works"
In 1995 I curated, in association with Eleni Mokas and Jorge Morales of
NAFAA
(the North American Free Artists Association), an exhibition of Canadian
new media artists in Mexico City called "Net@Works".
There I showed, in collaboration with Tom Leonhardt, our projection installation piece
"The Gathering Space".
I was down in Mexico DF from Oct. 17 to Nov. 4 '95 to put up the show and organize the lecture
series. The show was up at the Centro Nacional de
las Artes from October 24 until November 24. We did a lot of work on the web site at the
time and we have a Spanish version
up, thanks to translations from Jorge. Both versions are still in the future tense and the
plan was to expand on this site to include more information about the past and present
endevours of NAFAA.
Assorted Videos
Over the years I have produced a few videos. Some are what you might call experimental. Some were done for bands for free, like these done for The Bunchofuckingoofs which I've put up on YouTube and others were commissioned. Most of them can now be found on Google Video along with work by my animation students.
Here I have posted a video called "a bird flew in my window... I had to do something" |
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"Welcome to
the Electric Skin"
I had a piece in Graham Smith's telerobotic installations "CyberCity" and "Welcome to the Electric Skin".
That show ran from September 14th '95 at Gallery 401 at 401 Richmond St W #240. The robots
were linked up by closed circuit to Inter/Access and remotely to various electronic arts
sites around the world.
A complete CV is available on request.
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