anatomy

Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment emerged as a response to a discourse of disembodiment prevalent in early days of the Internet. I never believed that the physical gendered body would be subsumed in an idealized information age. Even in our attempts to externalize and expand upon the processes of the brain through the computational and storage capacities of the computer, the precariousness of the biological body persists. Somewhere along the way cultural theory veered away from body politics. Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment examines from the inside, not just 'the' body, but also 'my' body in particular. I have focused on the storage and retention of bodily memory in order to explore the relationship and/or disconnect between body and mind that has preoccupied philosophers for generations. In Ethics, Part II: Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind, Spinoza writes: "The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and … is cable of receiving a great number of impressions… If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing… Memory is simply a certain association of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body, which association arises in the mind according to the order and association of the modifications of the human body… The human mind has no knowledge of the body, and does not know it to exist, save through the ideas of the modifications whereby the body is affected."

Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise is an art/ poetry/ adventuring game, a playland for exploring our ever-present desire for constant and over-blown rewards. Our worlds (digital and breathing) are filled with needless and unearned praise, we are built to love exploding trophies for fifth place. This art/poetry game satisfies your compliment addiction by celebrating your walking/ jumping/ falling through strange and wondrous anatomical lands.Nothing You Have Done Deserves Such Praise is a 2013 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

(Source: Turbulence)

The Operature is an interactive installation of narrative-poetic movements engaging themes of forensics, anatomy and 21stcentury embodiment. The work incorporates a range of historical and contemporary contexts of observation and anatomical analysis including early modern surgical theaters, Francis Glessner Lee’s Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, and The Stud File, a methodical archive of personal evidence documenting the sexual exploits of Samuel Steward, a 20th century tattoo artist, gay pornographer, and friend of Gertrude Stein. In this iteration, 12 disks with biological symbols can be scanned by a webcam to access visual-textual movements as well as qr codes and augmented reality markers that can be examined with a smartphone. The Operature is a multi-modal project of the collective Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality (ATOM-r) with several large-scale manifestations including a 2-hour live performance and a 25-screen installation. This scaled-down version will include artifacts drawn from the larger body of work. (Source: ELO Conference 2014)