Artist Statement
I am interested in how the mind processes information and how we make sense of complex experiences. I like to examine how we know who we are by reflecting on our interactions with technology and representations of memory. Through these moments of reflection, I create artworks and projects that present questions surrounding the construction and dissemination of knowledge, ultimately identifying what is invisible and uncertain.
As digital technology becomes increasingly advanced, information has been simplified to visual icons, symbols, and character restricted text, with the design of networked systems geared toward the structure of the internet. The intake of data has evolved into a series of glances meant to be understood quickly and usually only attended to for a short period of time. Although this ongoing development in technology might allow us to use our time more efficiently, I am interested in how it might alter our identity as individuals and our perception of the world around us. I do not intend to simply present a negative view of digital media, but rather to critically examine the processes and relationships that occur within these encounters - inquiring into the everyday actions that are so familiar to us.
In my experimental video works, such as in-between and Seven slides from a yard sale, I address the intimate moments of the temporal viewing experience - from the moment we see an image, whether it be on a wall or a screen, to the moment it enters our consciousness and becomes amalgamated with memories of actual events and those internalized through the media. Much of my work over the years has stemmed from the notion of the televisual medium or media, referencing the technologically based systems we interactive with visually - the internet, television, automated billboards, bank machines, electronic video games, wireless mobile devices, etc.
Today’s televisual experience is complicated and never-ending. My work attempts to express a desire to locate and connect with oneself amidst this ever-expanding and technically advanced world of information. In a way, one could say I am attempting to create order within the “teletopological puzzle”(1) of contemporary visual culture. My work invites viewers to question what they are seeing, ultimately inviting them to question their relationship with technologies that function as a mediator between what they see and what they know.
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(1) Victor Burgin, In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), p. 22. The term teletopological puzzle was coined by Paul Virilio and is used throughout Burgin’s book. The “teletopological puzzle” is an expression for all objects of visual culture combined– television, cinema, photography, the internet and all other singular forms – not as a totality but as a constantly shifting constellation of fragments.
