In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel “Brave New World”,
the character Lenina Crowne utters a motto of that highly “conditioned”
futuristic society: “Ending is better than mending”. This statement contains
the idea that old things add ugliness to the world, and their use and repair cause
economic instability. The response in Huxley’s novel is to cultivate a society
with an endless appetite for all things new; constant consumption creates
demand for production, which creates employment for all, resulting in economic
stability.
This economic theory is not purely fiction. Immediately
following the World Trade Center tragedy in 2001, President Bush encouraged
people to go out and shop, travel, spend money, consume in order to keep our
economy viable. President Obama’s “Cash For Clunkers” program is another
example. Today, Americans participate in an increasingly disposable consumer
culture that acknowledges and accepts products designed with inherent “planned
obsolescence”. These economic beliefs
and practices are in opposition to current alternative ideas about implementing
sustainable practices in order to improve and conserve our planet.
For this project, I take Huxley’s dystopian idea and
reverse it to instead read: “Mending is better than ending.” I invite people
to participate in the process of Mending To Save The World. What will they
mend? Visitors are asked to consider a pressing world or community
problem, and imagine their own solution to fixing it, however unlikely, absurd,
impossible it may be. Using writing, drawing, broken objects (provided, or
objects that people bring to the event), and other materials, participants sit together at a table to create re-envisioned objects that literally,
abstractly, or metaphorically propose or present an idea or solution to that
particular issue. An exhibition space for the created objects is provided as part of the project if possible.
IsBetterThanEnding.jpg) |
| Installation view of Mending (Antioch) Is Better Than Ending, 2012, created with a reclaimed doorframe from North Hall Residence renovation reconfigured as a bed. Projection incorporates social justice images from discarded VHS tapes. Three frames are woven with discarded teaching materials including xeroxed essays and magnetic tape from VHS and reel-to-reel tapes. |
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| Mending Is Better Than Ending at the Emery in Cincinnati addresses the renovation and revitalization of the recently re-opened historic theater. |
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| Participants build a musical instrument designed after the Greek lyre from old drawers piled up in the Emery basement. |
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| Neighborhood kids pose with finished instruments. |
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| A neighborhood resident tunes her lyre. |
PATTERNS THAT CONNECT
In this project inspired by Carpenter and Schuster's renowned book by the same name, exhibition visitors are invited to sit at a table and add their own knitting stitches to a long, continuously knit panel. Contributors are asked to then label their rows with their name. The panel will continue to grow in length and diversity of stitch patterns, and will eventually be displayed as an artifact created by many people over a long period of time.
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| Knitters at the exhibition "Passage" at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, OH. |
FEAST
This project is uses an audio track with artist interviews to illuminate their creative processes, while inviting exhibition visitors to sit and experience a variety of sculptural materials discussed by the artists. While visitors listen in with headphones to the audio, they create sculptures which are then exhibited on a shelf adjacent to the installation table.
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| Exhibition visitors experience "Feast" at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, OH. |
WHAT IS MONA LISA THINKING?
What Is Mona Lisa Thinking? is a project about information overload. As of early January 2011, the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci generated 6,790,000 results when typed into the Google search engine. Using the painting as a focal point, I am exploring the image as a portal for searching the broad and constantly shifting scope of disparate references emanating from a single source, from the mystery of the identity of the model and the literary influences that may have impacted the creation of the portrait, to the Mona Lisa Live Wallpaper App, Pizzeria Mona Lisa, and the Mon ALISA complex systems architecture framework at Caltech.
The purpose of this project is to experiment with connecting unlikely threads of past and future; to use various themes (mystery, mathematics, literature, commerce) as filters to locate, categorize, and access information; and to generate new combinations of information through chance mashups, intentional synthesis, and algorithm.
Mona Lisa QR Code Gallery
TechArts Mona Lisa Mashup
