I am an artist currently living, working and studying in Bristol. My practice focuses around the process of collage, whether two-dimensional, three-dimensional, moving image or digital, my work most commonly takes the shape of installation, sculpture, video and digital work. A practice that is perpetually situated on the border between physical and virtual realities, my subject matter frequently explores the social and cultural impacts of an increasingly virtual life experience.
visualising the cloud
The Cloud: shared pools of computer system resources that are instantly accessible through the Internet.
Shrine: a holy, or sacred place dedicated to a specific immaterial concept, be it a deity or spirit. A reference point in the physical realm.
The cloud contains almost all of the world’s digital memories. Archived and accessible, these fragments of time exist above, below and around us, possessing the constituents of our constructed digital identities.
Throughout the 'Remember Me' residency period I will be exploring the notion of this invisible ‘cloud’ that contains our most precious and most important data. I will be spending th next couple of months attempting to visualise it’s immateriality, utilising the visual incarnations of its data: snippets of video and static imagery from Instagram stories, snapchats, photos and other visual evidence of moments and experiences that are archived in said 'cloud'
The Cloud is revered as an unseen force, facilitating many of the digital processes we utilise in our daily lives. Something we are unable to conceive, so understand through equation to natural atmospheric processes, clouds; immaterial but present. The Cloud is where spirituality and digital technology meet; the use of the cloud metaphor correlating to the human characteristic of constructing deities and spiritual belief systems in an attempt to explain our own existance. Within the context of techno-spirituality I will be examining the cloud's role as digital memory storage, and construct a reference point, or shrine, creating a 'spiritual' juncture between the digital and physical realms.
.g i f _
a l l r e a l i t i e s a t o n c e
magic wand tool / shapes by chance
fragments of
digital
memories
unrecognisable particles in the cloud
tactility without physicality
visualitions
Where once images that referenced past experiences were physical, most never now exist as objects; things. There is no material reference point for the world's digital memories. No physical monument, no place to remember and appreciate. A shrine creates a focus point of an idea, a gateway into an immaterial world of temporal fragments.
Is a phone a shrine?
> is a screen a shrine?
// an access point?
A portal between two infinitely different realms?
Available in China, the Odin 99; a strange combination of spiritual enlightenment, digital technology and late capitalism. A portable shrine of the digital age, it features a "customisable altar from the touch of the lotus button".
// A portable link
// A portable shrine
Does the referent point have to be physical?
Can it simply be a window into the immaterial realm?
Just as the Odin 99 provides a perceived technological link into the spiritual world, the 'shrine' can be a physical point where a window into the cloud exists.
v i s u a l r e s e a r c h
s h r i n e
a holy, or sacred place dedicated to a specific immaterial concept, be it a deity or spirit. A reference point in the physical realm.
> a portable shrine?
for digital memories
"In Buddhism, portable shrines were made so that devout travelers with nowhere to worship could carry their shrines with them. The shrines were two-piece, and could be shut together to preserve the artwork. Miniature Buddhas and Goddesses could be carried in small lacquer cases, much resembling the portable phone cases of today, carried on the wrist."
a literal analogy = the Buddha Phone
S H R I N E T O T H E C L O U D
scroll down for
digital shrine
Implementation in gallery space, Magdalen Road Studios until 15th March.
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