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art
& research
My MFA thesis project inside_out
is a distributed dance application combining the physical
space with the virtual space with a live broadcast/recording
of the performances over a high-speed network. The visitor
is invited to view the performances and become a performer
if they choose to do so. I am designing a real set (floors
and draping) as well as a virtual aural space. I am
disabling the conventional means of VR navigation such
as a wand or spaceball. The participant has to move
in the physical space. The user’s movement and
energy in the space affect the aural environment.
Some the project's early roots
are in a group show I participated in as an undergraduate
where the group created a physical motion platform that
was real-time controlled by keyboard and complimented
a simple animation projected onto a video monitor. My
interest in dance has been expressed in La
Boîte which I was working on to submit
to the 2001 ARS Electronica festival. The piece explored
the dance studio and its localities and invited the
user to watch some video performances in a playful theatrical
atmosphere. Past experiments with interactive sound
have played a role in the development of inside_out,
such as Aural
Masturbation (2000),
a project installed at the Newspace undergraduate lab
for an entire semester. The work explores media availability
on the Internet, mass culture, file "hoarding"
and interactive sound mixing with found sound samples.
More
is a project that tempts the user but never reveals
anything too "forbidden" to watch. It is a
provocative CD-ROM application that invites the user
to "touch" and while simulates the pace of
slow downloading video images over the web, pausing
and then giving short bursts of pleasure. The piece
is a commentary on porn and a culture that asks for
more and gets it, never to be satisfied.
As a female artist I have explored
certain cultural trends of American and French feminist
theory starting with my undergraduate studies at UIC.
I am influenced by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Isabella
Allende, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray
and Julia Kristeva and I have produced i
and To
The Loss of Innocence in response to my readings
and understanding of these writers. I am interested
in the exploitation of the female image, the female
voice as demonstrated in More. These works are reflections
of myself as female looking in and at my image and they
are used as self-therapy. The words of Kesaya E. Noda
from "Growing Up Asian in America" which I
read in 1995 have somehow made their way into i
as my words, trying to understand who I am without thinking
about borders and nationalities. I hold dual citizenship
and bear the weight of two nationalities, both of which
crush me on a daily basis. I strip both away and look
inside for answers at a time when everyone looks at
what the origin of your passport and the color of your
skin. I am an international citizen. I have no borders.
My motivation to explore non-western
traditions led me to the Pre-Colombian Art History,
a subject ignored in the European classrooms. In my
studies I have focused in the history of art and architecture
of Peru and Bolivia launching the Huacas
project, is a web-based VRML prototype for the studying
the site of Chavin de Huantar in Peru. Huacas
(sacred places in Quechua) is an attempt to create an
interactive academic product that combines a monoscopic
VR exploration of an archaeological site with academic
reference information on the site for the art historian
and advanced researcher. I was first interested in this
topic as an undergraduate when I produced the CAVE piece
Huacas97 inspired by famous architecture from
Peru and Bolivia. The project has led in the publication
of "Reconstructing Chavin De Huantar (Peru): Designing
a Teaching Tool for Art Historians" presented at
the 7th International Conference on Virtual Systems
and Multimedia and Virtual Heritage Colloquium (Berkeley,
California, October 25th-27th 2001).
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