Words Found on an Empty Beach

JASON LEWIS (Montreal)

Words Found on an Empty Beach employs a combination of large-scale touch screen interactives, mobile touch screen interactives, large-scale prints and micro-sculptures. It incorporates a series of texts written expressly for each format, integrated through a thematic focus on how we use language to build the scaffolding on which we hang our understandings of the world.

6:30 pm

Start: 24/03/2011

End: 10/04/2011

Creative computation is a material practice. What Jason Lewis can create is enabled and constrained by the programming language he uses, the processor on which it is run and the screen through which it is viewed. His poetry writing is also an intensely material practice, in which he experiments with how the characteristics of computational media dynamics, interactivity, data processing, and network awareness affect the ways in which his words are read. And, of course, both programming and poetry are writing practices.

Objet Indirect Object, a project deriving from the idea of materiality in media art, was born out of the curators, Steve Loft and Marie-Hélène Leblanc, putting their heads together in their wish to join the work of artists who explore the object and the material realm in their artistic approach. Initiated by DAЇMÔN, the project was spread over the course of more than a year in the form of a laboratory of artistic and technological experimentation. In addition, original work by artists from the region and the rest of Quebec and Canada is being shown not only at DAЇMÔN in Gatineau but also, thanks to invaluable partnerships, at AXENÉO7 in Gatineau and at Artengine and SAW Video in Ottawa. Exhibitions, screenings and performances will offer various interpretations of and perspectives on analogue creation, materiality and objects incorporated into or disincorporated from media art.

Presented in collaboration with DAЇMÔN, AXENÉO7 and SAW Video

 

 

Jason Edward Lewis

Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media artist, poet and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects devising new means of creating and reading digital texts, developing systems for creative use of mobile technology, designing alternative interfaces for live performance, and using virtual environments to assist Aboriginal communities in preserving, interpreting and communicating cultural histories.

He co-founded and co-directs the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace research network that is investigating how Aboriginal people can participate in the shaping of our digital media future, and co-directs workshops combining traditional stories and game design.

Lewis is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, creative and technical levels simultaneously. His creative work has been featured at the Ars Electronica Center, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Urban Screens, Mobilefest and imagineNATIVE, among other venues; his writing about new media has been presented at conferences, festivals and exhibitions on four continents; and his work with Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace has won multiple awards.