Cameras and body memory create new blends of performance with visual art practice

I propose that a learnt somatic experience of dance can translate into another discipline such as visual art. In my visual art practice I combine both photography, which is traditionally seen as a still medium, and performance in order to create a new form of embodiment. I have developed two series of art works of prints and video made in response to the Australian landscape. By analyzing my method of movement and photography I will describe how an embodied dance language can result in a material outcome – a series of drawings of light and movement, a body signature made possible through old and new technology. I have activated a performative state while capturing images discovering new ways of using technology reliant upon my knowledge of dance, performance and photography. Making a human size camera to make analogue prints I gained an intuitive knowledge of light – a skill that has become foundational in performance and photography. In response to space and light in the Australian landscape I then built a custom made camera that allows for the longest possible time to capture an image. I move while taking the image and use the camera as if an eye at the end of my arm. In this way I activate dance skills and embodied knowledge of space, timing and light, opening up a radical space for new thinking, making and performing.Furthermore this process engages memory and sentiment embodied through age. Many artists have responded to the unique qualities of the Australian landscape and by using a performative/photographic approach I have engaged with my own body memory. Being brought up in the landscape and training in ballet my body has acquired memories at a cellular level. My method has given memory a voice. In doing these works I have become conscious of how unconscious memories of the space and light in the landscape is a movement vocabulary activated in a way that ‘feels’ like dancing. As an ageing person this experience is profound and the resultant materialisation of the photographs and videos leave a material record of the event. The sentiments evoked through my process bridge the past with the present, the body with the mind, memory with body and space connecting disciplines in a new way.The materialisation of artworks itself continues cross-disciplinary processes using a technique that is a continuum of the performative. Through using technology I release memory of the landscape and pixel by pixel build imagery that relies on and is a part of the performative process. It is a photographic performance dance manifesting as pigment on paper exhibited a gallery context. The exhibition allows a space for the viewer to respond - re-membering the universal the act of moving. The works titled ‘body signatures’ and ‘Fly Rhythm’ become a communicative device in the gallery context.My paper through an analysis of process and methods used in making the two series will talk to several of the subjects listed and reveal a new way of connecting performance and visual art and old and new technologies.

The Presence of Words in Visual Art from Surrealism to Conceptualism

Without a doubt, one of the biggest changes that affected XXth century art is the introduction of words into paintings and, in more recent years, in installations. For centuries, if words were part of a visual composition, they functioned as reference; strictly speaking, they were used as a guideline for a better perception of the subject represented. With the developments of the XXth century, words became a very important part of the visual composition, and sometimes embodied the composition itself. About this topic, American art critic and collector Russell Bowman wrote an interesting article called Words and images: A persistent paradox, in which he examines the American and the European art of the XXth century in almost its entirety, dividing it up in six “categories of intention”. The aforementioned categories are not based on the art history timeline, but on the role that language played for specific artists or movements. Taking inspiration from Bowman's article, this paper is structured in three chapters, respectively: words in juxtaposition and free association, words as means of exploration of language structures, and words as means for political and personal messages. The purpose of this paper is therefore to reflect on the role of language in contemporary art and on the way it has changed from artist to artist.

Art work in gold and silver, mediaeval.

Mode of access: Internet.

Art work of Washtenaw county ...

A history & description of the county.

William Blake; a study of his life and art work,

"Books on Blake": p. xi-xii.

Improvisation in visual art practice using a photographic process

In this article I discuss how I have come to understand embodied processes in my visual art practice using photography. I danced professionally for 25 years and performed in various contexts including classical ballet repertoire, contemporary dance, and commercial dance. I choreographed for various productions working with a group of dancers for seven years before studying visual art. I experienced a particular sense of embodiment as a live performer in which prescribed movements were learnt, performed and repeated as if second nature. Transitioning into a conceptually based visual art practice the creative process was flipped around. Using painting, sculpture, performance (in a different context) and photographic methods I explored ideas from which forms such as video/audio installations, photography, performance art and painting emerged mostly in a gallery context. Although I still think of forms of movement as content, in a visual art practise the idea or concept invokes form.

The use of visual art in judging clinical competence in the operating suite

This research evolved out of the need to design and validate an instrument to assess nursing competencies in the operating suite. The study was an empirical investigation of the use of analytical and holistic rubrics to determine various levels of performance including inter-rater reliability. Three video clips that captured nurses performing as instrument nurses in the operating suite were recorded and used as prompts by the expert raters who judged the performance of the candidates in each video clip using the rubrics. Gaining consent for recording the video clips in the operating suite was difficult, creating a barrier to conducting this research. Ethical issues were addressed, which included editing of the video clips and removal of sound as stipulated by the Human Research and Ethics Committee. Despite the barriers to using visual art in research, this study produced acceptable inter-rater reliability in determining various levels of performance of the instrument nurse in the operating suite.

Body of my ancestors: exploring Wadawurrung dreaming through visual art

Body of My Ancestors: Exploring Wadawurrung Dreaming Through Visual Art. This research project uses traditional and contemporary art practices to reestablish, enhance and form new connections to Aboriginal culture. The overall aim maintains and revitualises Wadawurung cultural practices and their artefacts, along with creating new knowledge for future generations.

Information practices of teen content creators : the intersection of action and experiences a grounded theory study

What are the information practices of teen content creators? In the United States over two thirds of teens have participated in creating and sharing content in online communities that are developed for the purpose of allowing users to be producers of content. This study investigates how teens participating in digital participatory communities find and use information as well as how they experience the information. From this investigation emerged a model of their information practices while creating and sharing content such as film-making, visual art work, story telling, music, programming, and web site design in digital participatory communities. The research uses grounded theory methodology in a social constructionist framework to investigate the research problem: what are the information practices of teen content creators? Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and observation of teen’s digital communities. Analysis occurred concurrently with data collection, and the principle of constant comparison was applied in analysis. As findings were constructed from the data, additional data was collected until a substantive theory was constructed and no new information emerged from data collection. The theory that was constructed from the data describes five information practices of teen content creators. The five information practices are learning community, negotiating aesthetic, negotiating control, negotiating capacity, and representing knowledge. In describing the five information practices there are three necessary descriptive components, the community of practice, the experiences of information and the information actions. The experiences of information include information as participation, inspiration, collaboration, process, and artifact. Information actions include activities that occur in the categories of gathering, thinking and creating. The experiences of information and information actions intersect in the information practices, which are situated within the specific community of practice, such as a digital participatory community. Finally, the information practices interact and build upon one another and this is represented in a graphic model and explanation.

Intimate Transactions Stage 4

A telepresence-based interactive installation allowing people at three sites (The National Art Museum of China, Beijing; The Imperial City Art Museum, Beijing; CalPoly University, California, USA) to interact simultaneously using only their bodies. Each participant used a physical interface called a ‘Bodyshelf’ and wore a sound vibration transmission device called a ‘haptic pendant’ around their necks. By gently moving their bodies and engaging through this ‘smart furniture’, they instigated ‘intimate transactions’, which influenced an evolving computationally-generated ‘world’ created from digital imagery, multichannel sound and tactile feedback. Intimate Transactions (Version 4) was the culmination of a long-term interdisciplinary research project developed in four distinct stages. It was launched in in 2008 and subsequently acquired on invitation by Professor Peter Weibel for the ZKM Media Art History Museum Karlsruhe in 2012.