childhood truths

Childhood Truths is a reactive environment that challenges adults to relocate themselves to the “baby blanket” (proportional to an adult) on the floor. The blanket consists of four baby toys that flip, open, close and move. That movement triggers a sensor in the Teleo system (microcontroller) that plays a story from my own childhood, revealing how I perceived the world was when I was a child. Each of the 1-2min stories shares a truth of my childhood. For example, the pink, hidden mirror unveils my belief, as a child, that evil-doers live within the looking glass during the dark of night.

Adults must, at the very least, sit on the blanket and move the toys for the environment to react and narrate a story. Forcing an adult into this “floor” experience on the floor brings him/her to a more open thought process. Art is no longer understood by looking at a wall, but, rather, on the floor in a play mat or story circle manner, similar to the experiences of a preschooler, but where the environment mediates the experiences of a child.

childhood truths Details of each interactive component of quilt.
childhood truths
Details of each interactive component of quilt.
Childhood Truths Installed in Company Gallery.
Childhood Truths
Installed in Company Gallery.
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feminizing technology

Feminizing Technology is an exploration of the antithetical pairing of technology (labeled masculine) and domesticity (labeled feminine). Sewing, embroidery and needlework are common signifiers in feminist art, as well as signifiers of my own matrilineage. My grandmother sews, knits, embroiders, etc. and has complimented her traditional skills with a digitalized sewing machine that can be programmed and used with a computer. Seeing her interest and dependence on technology and the juxtaposition of old and new has provoked me to discover many similarities quilted and stitched work have with digital, pixel based work. Each step of the way I discover how the traditions of the past continue to influence and interact with the formation of traditions of the present. Immersing myself in both the quilting and programming experiences, I hope to reveal an equilibrium of a “genderless” activity.

Feminizing Technology  Installed for "Rude and Bold Women"
Feminizing Technology
Installed for “Rude and Bold Women”
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dictionary: a semiotic experiment

Language is a philosophical system that differs from culture to culture. Each language has words, grammars and constructs that are unique to the way people who use it think, analyze and classify the world. Dictionary: A Semiotic Experiment is an attempt to create an artificial language within an established virtual culture.

Dictionary re-visualizes the construct of language. This experiment looks at pictographic, standard and computer languages as a platform for analysis. The rigid structure of computer languages is adopted to create a formulaic grammar that is easily learned and described. The alphabet is constructed from a hybrid ideology from verbal and pictographic languages, where the alphabet visualizes the labial, velar and dental points of articulation for each pronounced sound. Dictionary utilizes user-created images as definitions. Opening the experiment to include an international audience magnifies the arbitrary, vague and elusive nature of language and its use. If each individual is allowed to create a word and visual definition from her own experience, the arbitrary and unique thinking patterns from cultures worldwide are forced to co-exist in an artificially unified space, where language as a dysfunctional concept becomes a hyper reality.

Dictionary: A Semiotic Experiment Diagram of phonemes, grammar and pronounciation. The letter in the top right is similar to the English long "o".
Dictionary: A Semiotic Experiment
Diagram of phonemes, grammar and pronounciation. The letter in the top right is similar to the English long “o”.
Dictionary: A Semiotic Experiment Screenshot of application.
Dictionary: A Semiotic Experiment
Screenshot of application.
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