ORLAN Revisited: Disembodied Virtual Hybrid Beauty

I argued in 2000 that the French artist ORLAN may have moved away from her Reincarnation performances toward her Self-Hybridizations because she thought that in the latter she would be more transparently obvious in meaning and less frequently misunderstood. I may have overstated the ability of audiences to comprehend, however. In this essay I argue that the virtual beauty that ORLAN unfolds in her ongoing series Self-Hybridizations is not a real or actual beauty but rather a fake beauty, causally disembodied, based on the effects she intends to create from an imaginative use of combined hybrid imagery. Subverting the familiar philosophical notions of aesthetic distance and aesthetic appreciation, hers is not a monstrous beauty (as some feminist art theorists contend) but rather a fake beauty that still has aesthetic features worth assessing. I suggest the possibility of generational differences in understandings of the term 'feminist', i.e., shifts in meaning from early feminist theory of the 1970s to ever-evolving, twenty-first century notions of the term, all of which add to the confusion. As I negotiate this terrain, I hope to steer both critics and viewers more directly to the words of the artist herself, "I have tried to make my Self-Hybridations as 'human' as possible, like mutant beings, but I still did not think that the confusion could be possible.

Before and Beyond the Bachelor Machine

This paper will examine the importance of Marcel Duchamp’s La Machine Célibataire (The Bachelor) on Art and Technology in the 20th and 21st centurie

Narrative approaches to design multi-screen augmented reality experiences

This paper explores how traditional narrative language used in film and theatre can be adapted to create interactivity and a greater sense of presence in the virtual heritage environment. It focuses on the fundamental principles of narrative required to create immersion and presence and investigates methods of embedding intangible social histories into these environments. These issues are explored in a case study of Greens Mill in the 1830’s, interweaving the story of the reform bill riots in Nottingham with the life of George Green, mathematician and proprietor of the Mill

The Everyday Fantastic

The Everyday Fantastic was a major solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art, London, 2009. A book was published to coincide with the exhibition: The Everyday Fantastic, with 100 full-colour illustrations and an essay by David Rayson. The exhibition and publication showcased four years of exploratory drawings responding to suburban living: ‘Comfy settees and fringed lampshades; a trip to the local off-licence; bird-watching, of both the human and animal kind. This is the sort of quotidian stuff that makes up David Rayson's depiction of English suburbia, but all of it drawn in bright, heavy, felt-tip inks so that his scenes take on an intense, immediate, disorientating feel, like something from a dream or fever.’ —Gabriel Coxhead, Time Out, January 2009 Research drew from the graphic works of historical artists including Francisco de Goya, George Grosz, Otto Dix and works from the Prinzhorn collection, alongside contemporary artists such as Raymond Pettibon and Mike Diana. The exhibition, book and associated guest lectures celebrated the formal possibilities of storytelling, exploring explicit figuration, surrealistic visions and psychological abstractions. The domestic scale and use of modest materials such as ink-pens echoed the works’ overarching themes of the vernacular and the ‘homegrown’. Reviews: TimeOut, critic’s choice 29th January 2009, The Guardian, Pick of the Week 7th and 14th of February 2009, The Spectator, 31st January 2009, and The Week, 24th January 2009. Lectures: The Everyday Fantastic (Guest Lecture) Slade School of Art (2009), The Everyday Fantastic (Public Inaugural Professorial Lecture) The Royal College of Art (2009), Everyone is here to see the show, (Gallery Lecture) The Rochelle School, London (2009). Everyday Fantastic works in other exhibitions: Peeping Tom, curated by Keith Coventry; The Vegas Gallery, London 2010 and Kunsthal Ka De (Amersfoort), Amsterdam 2011. Nothing in the World but Youth, Turner Contemporary, Margate 2011 (Publication isbn: 978-0955236334

Art and Medicine: A Collaborative Project Between Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar and Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar

Four faculty researchers, two from Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, and two from Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar developed a one semester workshop-based course in Qatar exploring the connections between art and medicine in a contemporary context. Students (6 art / 6 medicine) were enrolled in the course. The course included presentations by clinicians, medical engineers, artists, computing engineers, an art historian, a graphic designer, a painter, and other experts from the fields of art, design, and medicine. To measure the student experience of interdisciplinarity, the faculty researchers employed a mixed methods approach involving psychometric tests and observational ethnography. Data instruments included pre- and post-course semi-structured audio interviews, pre-test / post-test psychometric instruments (Budner Scale and Torrance Tests of Creativity), observational field notes, self-reflective blogging, and videography. This book describes the course and the experience of the students. It also contains images of the interdisciplinary work they created for a culminating class exhibition. Finally, the book provides insight on how different fields in a Middle Eastern context can share critical /analytical thinking tools to refine their own professional practices

Growing Literacy Skills with Visual Thinking Strategies on Virtual Art Museum Tours

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is an art curriculum and facilitation method developed by cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and museum educator Philip Yenawine (Yenawine, 2013). Art museum educators employ VTS to support aesthetic appreciation through close looking and judgment-free discussions centered on works of art. In this article, I describe a virtual tour for K-5 students at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida that employs Visual Thinking Strategies and intentional language while paraphrasing student comments. Students on virtual tours build visual and reading literacy skills through facilitated engagement with art

Meeting Spaces

Although in size and shape they more closely resemble traditional easel pictures than do some of his previous works—specifically those on uniquely fashioned supports, which patently display their constructed aspect, or his large-scale public commissions on concrete—Mark Schlesinger’s recent paintings nonetheless convey the impression, like those prior works, of having been built. Not only do the wooden frames upon which he mounts his canvases project his surfaces away from the wall at a noticeably greater distance than do conventional stretchers, but Schlesinger has made an effort to render his auxiliary supports conspicuous

Planar Refrains

My practice explores phenomenal poetic truths that exist in fissures between the sensual and physical qualities of material constructs. Magnifying this confounding interspace, my work activates specific instruments within mutable, relational systems of installation, movement, and documentation. The tools I fabricate function within variable orientations and are implemented as both physical barriers and thresholds into alternate, virtual domains. Intersecting fragments of sound and moving image build a nexus of superimposed spatialities, while material constructions are enveloped in ephemeral intensities. Within this compounded environment, both mind and body are charged as active sites through which durational, contemplative experiences can pass. Reverberation, the ghostly refrain of a sound calling back to our ears from a distant plane, can intensify our emotional experience of place. My project Planar Refrains utilizes four electro-mechanical reverb plates, analog audio filters designed to simulate expansive acoustic arenas. Historically these devices have provided emotive voicings to popular studio recordings, dislocating the performer from the commercial studio and into a simulated reverberant territory of mythic proportions. The material resonance of steel is used to filter a recorded signal, shaping the sound of a human performance into something more transformative, a sound embodying otherworldly dynamics. In subverting the designed utility of reverb plates, I am exploring their value as active surfaces extending across different spatial realities. The background of ephemeral sonic residue is collapsed into the foreground, a filter becomes sculpture, and this sculpture becomes an instrument in an evolving soundscape