PROJECTS

Grey Area 2002

We are defined by what we desire, and how we get what we want and how happy we are with what we have. Grey Area is an interactive self-portrait based based on the idea that who I am is simply a sum of how and what I desire. I minutely recorded levels of feelings of want, consumption and fulfillment hourly over 24 days and used this data to create a palette and grid system of 16 greys and 16 tones (pitch-shifted tones of my voice). The result is a visual and audio "fugue" capturing myself as the sum of my desires. Does rasterizing the psyche make me appear more discrete, or more generic?

Go there (FlashPlayer 5 required).

I-Section 1998

I-Section is an exploration of the emotional resonance associated with internal organs, the possibility of an aesthetic of dissection, and what remains when the body has been taken apart. The piece takes the form of an interactive anatomy lesson in which metaphorical associations rather than scientific explanations are the results. The inspiration for I-Section is an 18th-century anatomical model in Vienna whose abdomen can be opened so that the organs can be removed and studied. Though it was made for scientific purposes, judging from the idealization of the figure, the model is also an aesthetic object. This presentation disturbingly blurred the line between scientific observing and pleasure/power-oriented gazing; one was not only looking at a naked body but through it like an act of ultimate voyeurism riding on the sanctioned act of medical study. The combined beauty and horror—as in many finely presented specimens in medical museums—made me wonder if there could be an aesthetic of dissection. Seeing a body part, sadly discrete and loaded with the sense of departure and organic entropy, displayed in a scientific context creates a visual tension and reflection on the human condition. With I-Section, I wanted to create a comparable experience.

Go there (IE 4+ only).

The Compound 1996

The advantages and limitations of a web site—non-linear progression and evanescence of the on-screen images like those of the imagination—parallel the mechanics of the memory and desire, and can evoke what is otherwise an elusive and highly subjective state of mind. The Compound, my first net art piece from 1996, is a meditation and extended metaphor on 'the state of desire.' The fictional location portrayed in the piece consists of three buildings, each housing a linked series of images inspired by medical drawings and natural history tableaux. The user can navigate at will through the compound and conclude whether the place represents a resort or a penitentiary or both. Ideally, I would like my viewer to happen across my site by accident sometime late at night when he or she is most vulnerable to the oblique and evocative.

Go there (IE 4+, NN4+ required).