Our universe is shaped by cycles of proliferation, communication, consumption,
mutation, and decay. Just as our physical masses are in a constant state
of flux, our identities, memories, ideas, and collectively-formed histories
are also subject to the same laws of evolution that govern all life
in the universe. Social conditioning shapes our genders and our behaviors,
ripping apart and then reconfiguring our personalities. From before
the moment of conception, to long after the moment of our deaths, our
very beings are waxing and waning with exchanges of energy and matter,
a ceaseless dance of atoms and intentions.
Bodies die, and with death our molecules and our spirits are dispersed
into the world, only to be reabsorbed by new aggregate forms. Populations
grow and decline. Laws shift and taboos flower. Belief systems are generated
and then abandoned into a greater soup of historical activity. Gods,
deities, and mythologies have lifespans, as their existence depends
upon the ever-shifting consensus of their interpreters. Science has
become increasingly focused upon micro-/macro- cosmic relationships,
orders of complexity, and accumulation, while human mythology has been
primarily concerned with the anthropomorphism of nature. Somewhere between
observation, theory, and action lies art.
My recent interactive
work references these natural processes in several ways. I use modular
components, repetition, accumulation, variation, and chance to emphasize
changes in arrangement and meaning. Viewers are invited to discover
elements within the work, to rearrange them at will, and to determine
the degree of their complicity in the evolution of a tableau-vivante.
New meanings emerge from combinations both accidental and deliberate.
The curiousity of one viewer may profoundly alter the experience of
another.
I am especially
interested in the telescoping of history by use of juxtaposition and
appropriation. Artists over the millennia have frequently borrowed imagery
or narratives from older cultures, breathing new life into ancient legends
for artistic or political purposes. Actions such as these have the potential
for creating pinches or folds in the time-space continuum. I am harvesting
dead aesthetics and historical motifs in order to poetically describe
the mechanisms of evolution.