Opening quote from Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). Two frames from Machinate's original website designed by steve chow in 1999.
MACHINATE: A Projection in Two Movements
LAIWAN
MACHINATE: a projection in two movements
1999
Multi-media Installation
MFA Thesis, School For Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, 1999
Exhibited in various forms at:
Video In Studios, Vancouver;
Gallery 101, Ottawa
YYZ Artist's Outlet, Toronto;
Main Gallery, Winnipeg
DESCRIPTION
The two movements of this title refer to analogue and digital media. The installation comprises of these components:
1. Kiss a 16mm film loop installation for two projectors
2. Body: in the eye of the beholder a video loop installation for two projectors
3. <www.machinate....> an internet website from 1999
4. Ventriloquy an audio assemblage made from found objects
5. Book 01 / Book 10 book works made from computer parts
6. Machinate: A Projection in Two Movements written thesis
Through these works, I explore cultural assumptions regarding narrative, body and representation, including examination into structure, what is information, language and mechanisms (tools). In particular I began to investigate practices of predetermination and the tendency toward machination epistemologically structured into digital systems.
Thanks to the School for Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, and my Senior Supervisor Donna Zapf, Advisor Chris Welsby, and External Examiner Jin-me Yoon.
Special thanks to Winston Xin for programming this work at Video In Studios and Francois Dion for Gallery 101 in Ottawa in 1999.
Technical Direction and Cinematography: John Fukushima
Original Machinate website: steve chow
Kiss Actors: Centime Zeleke, Brice Canyon, Louis Ettling, Sook Kong, John Fukushima, steve chow
Working with ideas of Rene Descartes, La Mettrie, Donna Haraway, Zen Buddhism, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Lao Tzu, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others, I poetically, visually, musically and theoretically investigated how we have come to think about thinking, about consciousness and about mechanisms (tools).
Isolating analogue (film, book work) and digital (video, computer) media to examine the effects each of these formats (through objects) have on our approach to, our movement in, and our perception of, the world. Starting with the binary of “digital / information / video” juxtaposed with “analogue / body / film”, I explore consciousness with an approach to inquiry through structuralist, phenomenological and Zen/Taoist ideas.
Media information shapes everything through cultural and scientific discourses and is the economic, social and political currency of our computer era. Machinate explores the values and phenomena to be found in such currency within artistic and aesthetic paradigms.
