Collaboration with Brian Boldon
Denmark
Brian and I were introduced in 2004 when we were invited to be part of a panel at the 2004 NCECA Conference in Indianapolis titled: Under the Influence, in which we discussed ways that digital culture was impacting the field of ceramics, both overtly and surreptitiously. We vowed to find a way to collaborate, and at the next NCECA conference, a path presented itself in the form of an opportunity to propose a residency in Skaelskor, Denmark, home to Guldagergaard, also known as: The International Ceramic Research Center of Denmark. As a result, Brian and I were there at the same time in the summer of 2005, and while there, proposed a collaborative show which we would go on to create the following year while on sabbatical/faculty development leave. The images below are from that show, entitled Liquid: Dataspace and Embodiment, installed at the “Apple House”, which is the gallery on the grounds of Guldagergaard. With that show, it was our intention to examine the notion that when we spend time engaging in activities on computers and other digital screens, we unconsciously relate to those activities as taking place in a “space” which theorists refer to as “dataspace”. With this show, we wanted to create a sense in which the kind of imagery (and imagery manipulation and distortion) we have come to associate with dataspace had been wrested from within that space and brought out into the “real” physical world. We also wanted to give viewers a sense of standing in a liminal threshold between physical space and virtual space — as if one could fluidly pass between the two, and was in fact in a place where that was occuring.
