equipment for living

I recently received a Research Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, for the research and development of my current project, Equipment for Living. The work further explores our cultural relationship with technology. It is focussed on the role of electric artifacts - machines, gadgets, scientific instruments, industrial equipment, and "smart" devices - in our daily lives and rituals. These objects have not only a utilitarian functionality, but are part of an archetypal imagination of the nature of mystical energies that has manifested itself in our relationship to electricity and machines. Not only do we see and hear ourselves on the TV and the phone, but we begin to notice a reflection of our very essence in these strange artifacts that act. How does the enigmatic and alien nature of the machine resonate with the human soul?

Over the next several months, I will consolidate my research and create several installation prototypes in preparation for further production work. Using the forms of industrial and consumer equipment, combined with digital media and behavioural software programming techniques, I plan to create hybrid and recombinant kinetic objects and systems.