Mary Alton + Curriculum Vitae
Mary Alton has been making holograms and sculptural installations for over 10 years, her pieces are in collections in Canada, the US, and Europe. Presently on the Board of Directors at InterAccess, an artist run centre for Electronic Media; she was a founding member of the Photon League, holographic facility for artists.
Graphic DesignAs a designer for Immpact! Multimedia Mary Alton designed interfaces for projects such as Padulo Interactive Kiosk for Padulo Advertising Inc., Feature Magazine interactive and Holiday House. Mary has assisted artists like Robert W. Stevenson, Stacey Lancaster & Euan McDonald with design projects and animations using Macromedia Director.
InstructorAt present, instructor of digital painting and Photoshop at the Academy of Design and Merchandising. She has taught many workshops about holography at the Photon League and Fringe Research Holographics.
Current Projects"Rondo" is a holographic environment and performance piece in collaboration with composer/performer Robert W. Stevenson. Rondo premiered at the Music Gallery February 1995, presented by 5th Species concerts. Rondo is about language and the development of language relevant to the different media the artists work with--specifically sound and light. The text is based on the fragments of Sappho's poetry that have survived by recreation over 24 centuries. We are interested in the quality of time that the text and the media share and the irony of the immortality of the artist.
A current project "Critical Mass" utilizes digital technologies for research and development to explore crowd phenomena. Critical mass in a popular sense describes the point at which the crowd reaction takes over. Is a crowd just a group of people until that point is reached? What happens to the individual? The aim of this project is to explore the phenomenon of critical mass.
Both the Sappho project and Critical Mass will be included in an exhibition of Canadian new media artists called "Net@Works". It will show at the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City in October and November of 1994. Keep in touch for an extensive site dedicated to artists and works in this show.