symbols

"The Fall" is the story of John Smith, three-time winner of the MBPW (Most Boring Person in the World award), who is about to take a radical step into the next phase of his life. John Smith is not only himself in this narrative—through the use of archetypal images, symbols and plot, he becomes an everyman for our age. This story synthesizes text, images, audio, and animation into a single sustained vision of the action. It engages readers with opportunities for fuller interactions (e.g. triggering visual events during the piece and, at the end, an interactive quiz). These interactions push against typical reader expectations and force a more pro-active engagement with the material.

"The Fall" is linear in plot and uses elements of fiction (character, symbol, etc.) typically found in conventional print-based works. This is a deliberate attempt to bridge the "audience gap," where we still see a mainstream audience for print-based literature, but a limited audience for electronic literature. This bridging is an important concern in our field: with works using linear plots and other standard elements of fiction, we can expand our audience among readers who are more comfortable with the conventions of traditional literature; at the same time, we can also show younger writers a path that connects the print-based past and the electronic future of storytelling. This mixed brand of electronic literature empowers our field with an inclusiveness that embraces beginning writers and offers a wider potential for popular engagement.

(source: ELO 2018 website)

Journey with the Angel is a interactive fiction mingling poetry and humour, visual delirium and symbolic tradition, musical and vocal creations. It's in the company of Angel Gabriel, main character of this strange and enthralling adventure that we make the journey through imaginary universes populated by mythical beings. [Source: http://www.agencetopo.qc.ca/vitrine/index_eng.html ]

Computer Graphics Imaging, CGI, is a rapidly growing industry permeating a variety of disciplines such as the military, the arts, and the sciences. Despite its state of the art character, CGI is a gendered technology manifesting itself in gendered disciplines. The application of CGI marks two highly significant events: one is the virtual and real experience of sexualized death and destruction. The other is reproduction by virtue of its presence and application in Bioinformatics.

Due to CGI's genderedness, in both instances, the image of woman and its meaning is altered while she herself remains absent. As women are portrayed through images of sexualized aggression and increasingly are invited to the front lines (virtual and real), women may potentially lose ground on that which thus far has been identified as typically female: the power of reproduction. At the heart of these developments are programming languages [code], informing technology which in turn informs culture. Code is the categorical rationalization of language, no longer instrument for lyricism or expression but the tool to command technology. To write code means to have power, or rather, code is power. Women primarily remain illiterate when it comes to the production of this powerful and influential new text.

(Source: 2002 ELO State of the Arts gallery)

The Composition installation turns live video of participants in an installation space into imagery completely composed of text. Participants in the installation interact with a live projected version of themselves where a real-time video image of themselves is literally ‘composed’ out of text characters. Composition examines how areas of an image can carry multiple weights—their symbolic value as text characters, and their light or dark value as part of the overall composition.

 (Artist's description at project site)

Framed by various folktales, "Contemplating Flight" explores established female representations and further tests the limitations of participation in a challenging narrative grammatology.

Artist Statement:Like previous artworks on 6amhoover.com "Contemplating Flight" explores the interplay between digital narrative, image and interaction. It aims to question the paradigm of interaction equating to empowerment.

Bettelheim like many ponders the importance of the forest "Since ancient times the near impenetrable forest in which we get lost has symbolized the dark, hidden, near-impenetrable world of our unconscious. If we have lost the framework which gave structure to our past life and must now find our way to become ourselves, and have entered this wilderness with an as yet undeveloped personality, when we succeed in finding our way out we shall emerge with a much more highly developed humanity." The Uses Of Enchantment: The Meaning And Importance of Fairy Tales 1976.

Using the symbolically charged ancient image of a forest as a context—the artwork creates a space to explore the notion of transformation. It also continues my interest in the repositioning of established protagonists. Using female folk representations the project presents different narrative instances of a singular archtype—the bird. The emotional arc of this artwork is also explored via a newly designed and commissioned audio. Built in sets of sonic loops the audio helps to enforce a looping "trapped" premise.

(Source: ELO 2008 Media Arts show)