artist's statement by jodie church
Information Age
Information Age begins with the seemingly insignificant action of a flick of a light switch, whereby the individual is opened to a world of possibility through technology, imagination and society. We travel through networks, both technological and social, navigating a maze of signs, symbols and unfamiliar languages to breach the barriers preventing communication and inhibiting interaction. What awaits us is the comfort of other individuals, who have overcome similar struggles only to find one another and to make a home on this shared planet.
Through a time based generative collage, representational illustrations of the concept of information, as gathered from 60 individuals, are juxtaposed with corresponding photographs, illustrations, schematics and diagrams as interpreted and gathered by the artist. The artist organizes the thoughts of others via a digital medium, responding to the static visual research drawings employed in the work, by creating a series of moving images and thus a new collective interpretation for the viewer of what is information. Several major themes have been identified in the research collection and the resulting work is the artist’s taxonomy of the gathered images.
The images act as a catalogue of human experience that explore the explicit themes of science and technology, print and digital media, networks and systems, information as place, symbols and language, the self and others, communication and interaction, and human society and its relationship with the natural world. Though these categories fall within the four key aspects of Michael K. Buckland’s “Information as Thing”, they also transcend the notions of information as thing, knowledge, process or action.[1] They are fluid and intermingling, one leading into the next, and sharing interpreted visions, while the viewer, as an agent separate from the world contained within the work, is very much a part of the external world that surrounds them in his or her daily life.
[1] Michael K. Buckland, “Information as Thing,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5) (June 1991), p. 352.
Through a time based generative collage, representational illustrations of the concept of information, as gathered from 60 individuals, are juxtaposed with corresponding photographs, illustrations, schematics and diagrams as interpreted and gathered by the artist. The artist organizes the thoughts of others via a digital medium, responding to the static visual research drawings employed in the work, by creating a series of moving images and thus a new collective interpretation for the viewer of what is information. Several major themes have been identified in the research collection and the resulting work is the artist’s taxonomy of the gathered images.
The images act as a catalogue of human experience that explore the explicit themes of science and technology, print and digital media, networks and systems, information as place, symbols and language, the self and others, communication and interaction, and human society and its relationship with the natural world. Though these categories fall within the four key aspects of Michael K. Buckland’s “Information as Thing”, they also transcend the notions of information as thing, knowledge, process or action.[1] They are fluid and intermingling, one leading into the next, and sharing interpreted visions, while the viewer, as an agent separate from the world contained within the work, is very much a part of the external world that surrounds them in his or her daily life.
[1] Michael K. Buckland, “Information as Thing,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5) (June 1991), p. 352.
