In Conversation: Meg Ross and José Andrés Mora

2022

Delving into the way text and language shape their artistic impulses in different ways, the conversation focused on the creative opportunities and critical issues that emerge from their investigations of chance, error, and disruption, activating the liminal spaces between digital and analogue through photography and interdisciplinary media practices. Ross’s exhibition, Nearest Neighbour, represents the culmination of two years of creative research by the Masters of Fine Art candidate and is presented at AGG in conjunction with the School of Fine Art and Music. A 2020 graduate from the same program, Mora’s work has been exhibited across Ontario, Quebec, and the East Coast. He is currently working at Trinity Square Video, Toronto.Delving into the way text and language shape their artistic impulses in different ways, the conversation focused on the creative opportunities and critical issues that emerge from their investigations of chance, error, and disruption, activating the liminal spaces between digital and analogue through photography and interdisciplinary media practices.  …

Key moments

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Housekeeping Notes
Housekeeping Notes
3:13

Housekeeping Notes

3:13

Bios
Bios
3:39

Bios

3:39

Jose Andreas Mora
Jose Andreas Mora
4:39

Jose Andreas Mora

4:39

Rogue Lament
Rogue Lament
30:12

Rogue Lament

30:12

The Mornings in Reverse
The Mornings in Reverse
31:46

The Mornings in Reverse

31:46

How i Title My Works
How i Title My Works
39:51

How i Title My Works

39:51

How Do You Use the Personal in Your Work
How Do You Use the Personal in Your Work
44:17

How Do You Use the Personal in Your Work

44:17

Thoughts on the Gradient
Thoughts on the Gradient
1:11:36

Thoughts on the Gradient

1:11:36

Autogenerated Transcript from YouTube (if available)

Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript​.

0:06

so i want to welcome you all here today joining us from wherever you are

0:12

my name is nicole neufeld and i’m the community engagement coordinator here at the art gallery of

0:17

guelph and i’m thrilled that you’re all joining us this evening for a conversation

0:23

between artists meg ross and jose andres mora this conversation has been organized in

0:30

concert with meg ross’s exhibition currently on view at the art gallery of guelph nearest neighbor which marks the

0:37

culmination of two years in the studio working towards a master of fine arts

0:43

in studio arts at the university of guelph so to begin uh i’d like to offer a land

0:51

acknowledgement on behalf of the art gallery of guelph which is hosting this uh this discussion tonight

0:59

what we now call guelph ontario is situated on treaty land that is steeped in rich indigenous history and home to

1:06

many first nations inuit and metis people today as we gather this evening we would like

1:13

to acknowledge that the art gallery of guelph resides on the ancestral lands of the atawandrum people and more recently

1:20

the treaty lands and territory of the mississaugas of the credit we recognize the significance of the

1:25

dish with one spoon covenant to this land and offer our respect for anishinaabe

1:31

and metis neighbors as we continue to to strive to strengthen our relationships with them

1:38

and we express our deep gratitude and recognize our responsibility for the stewardship of this land on which we

1:44

live work and create and so as we’re gathered here today

1:51

connected uh virtually yet physically dispersed it’s it’s also a good moment

1:56

to um reflect and contemplate on the significance of place

2:01

and in doing so recognize how the different traditional lands

2:07

we reside in and move through and form our lives for myself as a settler working

2:14

at a cultural institution i recognize that this is a crucial statement and a

2:19

moment for pause and contemplation for us all to

2:24

think about um how especially organizations like ours

2:30

can remind us to be aware of the ongoing effects of colonialism that underpin our

2:36

institutional histories so not only have cultural institutions

2:42

like ours employed deeply colonial methods of representation but because of our

2:47

authority that has been granted to us um in the way that we shape histories these narratives have been accepted as

2:54

truth informing policies and practices that have very real everyday implications

3:01

so again it’s it’s a good reminder and moment of pause uh to think about the

3:06

histories of of this land and the people who who live here

3:13

so for a few housekeeping notes um i just want to let you know that this the

3:20

speakers this evening are really excited to hear from you uh and would love to hear your perspective so i do

3:27

encourage you to drop any questions or comments in the chat and there will be there will be time for us to um interact

3:33

with those along the way uh and last but not least i’d like to

3:39

share some bios uh for our two speakers this evening uh meg ross’s practice blends

3:45

installation photography photography sculpture and writing focusing on the ambiguity of language

3:53

through its poetic and physical qualities ross redefines adapts and translates

3:59

roles of communication ross graduated from the nova scotia

4:05

college of art and design university in 2015 with a bfa in intermedia

4:10

and she exhibited a solo installation for louis blanche in

4:15

2018 and has been featured in multiple group exhibitions at venues including

4:21

gallery 44 the kyber center for the arts eye level gallery robert cannonage gallery boarding house

4:28

gallery and the cook house gallery in london england meg ross is now officially an mfa

4:34

graduate from the studio studio arts program at the university of guelph

4:40

jose andreas mora is a venezuelan-born artist and settler living in toronto

4:47

in his 10-year career maura completed the studio art program at capilano

4:53

university in 2008. he earned a bfa in into interdisciplinary arts from the nova

5:00

scotia college of art and design in 2012 and finished the mfa in studio arts at

5:07

the university of guelph as well currently maura is the gallery manager

5:12

at the media arts artist run center trinity square video and sits on the board of directors of the media arts

5:20

online platform uh vaca

5:25

maura has exhibited projects across canada in venues like art metropol birch

5:30

contemporary dalhousie art gallery louis blanche strutz gallery among many others

5:36

most recently maura exhibited a solo show uh called the morning in reverse in

5:41

art space in um peterborough and produced the telephone based project landline gallery for

5:48

trinity square video and i’d like to welcome both uh meg and jose andreas

5:55

uh to to join the conversation

6:00

thank you so much thank you so much okay um

6:08

can everyone hear me okay yeah oh my god you’re all frozen for a

6:13

second there okay oh no okay okay yeah i can hear you [Laughter]

6:20

right at the beginning wonderful uh good afternoon good evening

6:26

everyone uh thank you for joining us i am really honored to be here to have this conversation with my colleague nick

6:32

ross of her work um i’m constantly and i’m going to be

6:38

kind of moderating this talk i guess um a few months ago

6:43

or weeks ago i don’t know meg invited me to participate in this artist’s talk by uh helping her carry

6:49

out this conversation about her exhibition and i was really excited and said yes absolutely

6:56

and then a few layers later i think i was like wait what am i doing and then she says do whatever you want and i was

7:02

like okay great um um and so you know but she also mentioned

7:09

that she wanted me to talk about my work which i thought was really generous and so

7:14

considering that this is an exhibition of her work right um and so we talked a little bit about how we were gonna doing

7:20

this conversation talk around both of our practices and focusing on

7:25

the parts the uh overlap for my studio practices so

7:31

i’m an artist and as an artist i have questions and curiosities around meg’s work and

7:39

a lot of those questions come from the fact that we share a lot of similarities and our interests

7:45

and some of those reasons also sorry some other questions that i have though are

7:51

questions that i have just from the fact that i kind of want to know how she thinks as an artist

7:57

and so for that reason um we thought it would be kind of interesting to conduct our conversation

8:03

and i mean my conversation i mean in this presentation um a little bit

8:09

in the style that i would maybe carry out a studio business with mac so i’m gonna be asking meg a few questions

8:15

with some notifications um but i guess like this is sort of where i

8:22

kind of wanted to feel like a studio visit why people get to peek into

8:28

because through this are my favorite thing wonderful

8:34

amazing so um the only difference here is going to be of course that um

8:41

you all know mike’s work intimately and maybe you know not so familiar with mine so

8:46

um i first gonna begin by inviting meg to do an introduction about her work and

8:53

her exhibition for anyone in the audience that just needs to a refresher over the exhibition and about the

8:58

exhibition and then i’m going to introduce a little bit about my work uh for anyone wondering who is this

9:05

person uh and yeah and then we’ll get some questions started and um

9:12

throughout the conversation i’m going to be showing i’m going to be showing some images of mixed work and also showing some of the images of

9:18

my work and jumping back and forth and so on and so forth and hopefully that makes sense to everyone

9:25

so with all that said i’m going to open up the blog [Music]

9:32

yes i’m going to share my screen now um nicole i am getting a

9:38

notification that i have host disabled participant screen sharing

9:45

i will get that sorted for you right away i had to leave a conversation at one

9:50

point and then come back in so that’s right probably what happened

9:56

i am a co-host now wonderful okay

10:09

okay

10:14

okay well thanks to nicole and everyone at the art gallery um for letting me speak today and thanks to

10:21

everyone for being here and for coming um thank you also to jose andreas for

10:27

participating in this talk and being so extremely generous with your time i’ve

10:32

been a fan of your work for a while now so i’m thrilled to have this conversation with you

10:38

um so preparing for this talk has been a really wonderful opportunity for me to

10:43

delve more deeply into my thesis work that i created for my mfa it kind of felt like

10:49

a compliment like a like a nice little walk in the park through work that i know really

10:55

well but still found some exciting ideas along the way so like we kind of mentioned already my

11:02

goal for this discussion is to talk about for about 10 minutes to

11:07

introduce some aspects of my work and give a little verbal tour of what you would see

11:13

walking into the space so i’m going to zero in on what the work means to me and

11:18

and kind of where and how i situate it in contemporary art

11:24

so my work mostly takes the form of photo based sculptural environments that use a variety of materials but in this

11:32

work presented at the art gallery of guelph i use glass photo papers

11:39

mdf and aluminum how i understand the language of photography is

11:45

far from straightforward and i’m more interested in its relationship between materiality immateriality and

11:52

dematerialization the technique that i used to explore this was embodying the logic of

11:58

disillusion through the process of searching through my photographic archive and pinpointing moments of error

12:08

such as scratch emulsions light leaks and chemistry failures in my digitalized film negatives

12:15

i situated the i like the general idea of this work in relation to the concept

12:20

of affect defined by gregory segworth and melissa gregg as quote the intimate

12:26

and impersonal that accumulates across both relatedness and interruptions in

12:31

relatedness a relationship with images is often filtered from filtered from fingers to

12:38

screens and it’s through that tension that i’m really interested in bringing photography back to the material

12:45

an image is a copy a replicated visual circulating and being dispersed through

12:50

a variety of hosts the circulatory logic of the image saturated world we live in

12:55

today to be exact it’s 54 400 photographs are produced every

13:01

single second makes me conclude that takes that taking a photograph today is almost a

13:06

subconscious act it’s like a romantic attachment to fulfill an impulse

13:12

capturing moments that theoretically last forever by exploring conversations about where

13:18

photography is now in the present day and how a contemporary approach to

13:24

expand the uses of the image can lead us to a hybrid language that blends photography with writing sculpture and

13:32

installation so when visitors enter the gallery they will first see a table with photo books

13:39

sitting on top these books are made from photographs that are dry mounted onto mdf wooden

13:45

blocks the table as well as the photo books function like an index of the larger

13:52

installation each book i created was a representation of the specific books

13:58

that i read from my research for my thesis exhibition and i welcome the viewers to interact

14:04

with the books on the table and invite a leg time where intervals of contemplation and reflection

14:13

can be present and this notion of contemplation and reflection kind of spills into the

14:19

larger space of the gallery where viewers are confronted with large-scale abstract photographs that are mounted to

14:27

supreme flatness which not only feel atmospheric and calming but also kind of

14:32

deceptive since the work doesn’t read as photographs from the start the images have no edges no lines no

14:40

shapes and therefore it kind of invites multiple different interpretations when confronted with the

14:47

atmospheric gradients one person situated the images as fields

14:52

fields of color fields of contemplation [Music] others situated the work as paintings so

15:00

one could maybe think of it as you know or situated in the interrelationship to digital and

15:07

material culture of photographs or someone could like depict the work and

15:12

akin to accidental photographs taken by a mobile phone with her blown out pixels

15:17

from the overabundance of light from a flash and i think this resistance of

15:22

classification is really um of interest of mine it’s one of the reasons why

15:28

situating it in affect made sense since affect is extremely random and fleeting

15:35

affect in this environment allows us to consider the flexibility and fluidity of

15:40

photography and strip it down just to focus on the light that is bathed in the space a

15:47

light and energy that feels alien and strange at the same time

15:53

relaxing and calming something like witnessing a sunset or a sunrise

15:59

the decision to recycle my images came from the logistics of shooting an analog

16:04

during the pandemic where camera stores and film services were

16:09

closed for development so getting film developed was kind of out of the question

16:15

but working with my archive i discovered was an extraordinary source of visual material and inspiration

16:22

i have this belief that a photograph contains a multitude of images and that

16:28

revisiting a photograph unfolds into other images of memory

16:34

taking the smallest detail of of images in my archive for example retained a

16:39

certain residue for me for something to revisit to remember to ponder and to continue

16:47

it casted a critical view on light and perception and i started to get excited about addressing and complicating this

16:54

idea of an expanded image and i asked myself how do these image gather meaning

17:02

and in this context working in a series that questions photography’s materiality affect was triggered by the shifting

17:08

moods of this hybrid installation it was one of the ways it was a way for me to

17:14

kind of connect with the loss of an image and explore questions of language and impermanence

17:20

so as our eyes move across the flat photographs on the wall you move through the room trying out different viewpoints

17:27

searching for clues and connections this gets interfered with by the shimmering lines of the glass sculptures

17:33

in the center of the room so here you have a floor floor sculptures

17:39

so if we can go to the maybe an image of the sculptures on the

17:45

floor um oh sorry

17:51

yeah that that worked perfect um so here the floor sculptures are playing with the title of the of the exhibition

17:58

nearest neighbor the term neighbor of course implies two of

18:03

something but these floor sculptures also function as a subtle suggestion to the tool that

18:09

i use to create the photographs on the wall it’s like a sculptural rendering of a

18:14

two-dimensional gif in photoshop named the marquee tool also known as the

18:20

marching ants um but like the contingent nature of digital imagery the shimmer of this line

18:26

is way more than its function it alters your perception your path in the space your body language

18:34

in the book the neutral roland barthes writes the inventory of shimmers is of nuances of states of changes the shimmer

18:42

described here is metaphorically materialized in this line of glass beads that pools neatly onto the glass

18:48

photographs on the on the floor the process of

18:54

titling these works on the floor as well as on the walls followed a conceptual parameter of using

19:01

micros the microsoft word alt text generator to produce the titles

19:06

from the outset image and text have run parallel with each other each on their own path but staying close

19:13

there’s a disconnect for better or for worse when one tries to describe an image

19:20

through words and vice versa even more so when we leave it up to the fates of automatic generators and algorithms

19:27

for example this alt word engine in microsoft is a generator

19:32

with essentially one goal and that’s to recognize an image and use um key key

19:38

words to describe that image in written language however it’s very rudimentary in its

19:44

descriptions i find it kind of humorous the the way that it kind of uses

19:51

language to describe these abstract photos but i also give them credit too since i can’t really describe what the

19:58

images look like myself so by turning to alt generators the

20:03

result can be like i said humorous but but also dangerous at the same time

20:09

as the description is often inaccurate of what the viewer is seeing to give

20:14

some examples of titles the background pattern description

20:20

automatically generated with medium confidence no image description automatically

20:26

generated with high confidence a picture containing outdoor sunset

20:32

description automatically generated with low confidence content marked as descriptive will not

20:38

expose a description to screen readers i suspect that the generator situates

20:44

itself through observing tonal ranges and space i say this because it read the

20:50

one that had more intensity at the bottom edge than the top edge as a sunset however to

20:56

that logic many of the other photographs should have been labeled a sunset as well but they were just merely a

21:02

background pattern this makes me think that algorithms have personality traits that are not too

21:08

dissimilar to human beings most have this kind of boundless drive determination and persistence to do

21:15

their job but they can also be delusional reckless and impulsive um the algorithm that i use to create

21:22

the images in the exhibition is called nearest neighbor it’s is one of the main like driving force

21:28

for the reason i titled the show this this title um the algorithm’s main job is to do

21:35

essentially to do a proximity search in a photograph so it scans the image for

21:42

pixel values and then optimizes the closest or most similar value to a given

21:47

point i was drawn to it because of its a little alliteration but also because of its personality

21:54

to me nearest neighbor is like a reliable and dependable friend

22:00

it makes very generous decisions about what my photograph needs i think it’s fair and

22:06

impartial there’s no judgment on photos photographs when nearest neighbor does its job i can’t quite say the same about

22:13

the alt text when it declares my photograph has no image it’s impossible to reason with a personality

22:20

like that so i’m i’m interested in things that are out of place and enlarging or extending

22:28

the disarray and the disarranged title or tiny details so it it encompasses our field

22:36

of view the fragmentary nature of the works for example a glitch on the photograph a

22:42

sample of an image the shimmer of of the line of glass beads functions to me as a poem of loss

22:50

and memory however mortal or fleeting it is and how this poem becomes a foundation for our

22:57

own synthesis of feeling and thinking with simple pleasures it’s about rethinking

23:03

singularity and multiplicity and concepts of chants that reveal itself in poetic sentiment that are catalyzed by

23:12

the accident whether within the specific failings of technology

23:17

the fragility of analog processes or just simply encounters with the mundane

23:22

world of daily life so i think right now i’ll give the floor to

23:28

jose andreas to introduce your work and then we can continue going back and forth

23:35

and like we said we’ll open up to some questions yeah wonderful thank you so much that’s

23:42

really that was really great to get a good sense of your work i am just uh i

23:49

stopped um sharing my screen for a second just while i reset stuff

23:56

and thank you so much uh i’m gonna be brief with my uh this group with my um

24:03

sharing of uh off work yeah i

24:08

am just gonna take a second here [Music]

24:16

um okay wonderful so like uh next i also

24:22

went to nascar for my bfa and went to the university of world for my mfa which is where i met meg

24:29

um i have been working as an artist in 2012 uh so for about 10 years about 10 years

24:35

now and uh my work straddles a few different disciplines but i primarily

24:41

would say that i’m an installation artist um in my work i’m interested in how i can

24:48

use the material quality of certain types of technology and processes and also the material

24:55

quality of certain objects to portray a and also hopefully embody in the viewer

25:03

an experience of displacement the work that um it’s playing here is a

25:08

documentation of my work um scanner uh trinity square video that was my graduation show and i’ll it’ll make a

25:14

little bit more sense as i talk more about my work

25:20

so this general theme of displacement has goes way back for me

25:27

in 2012 one of my earliest video works was a video recording of

25:34

many friends of mine talking in different living rooms where in the video i dub my voice over

25:41

the voice of my friends saying the exact same words that they were saying and just going to give you a little bit

25:47

of a sense i’m going to play you just like a quick 15 second excerpt of just so you can so when it comes to

25:53

critiquing things if if something is too far out there

25:59

they just like they think it’s like the worst thing in the world or like they they can’t verbalize

26:07

okay well i’ll give you a prime example and i actually understand what i’m talking about okay so this we did this conceptual piece about or we they’re all

26:14

we all did conceptual pieces and there’s one girl this could conceptualize on so

26:20

just i’m just gonna explain you a quick other exercise to get the sense of the effect um so there’s a very close lip

26:26

syncing there between our dubbing of my voice over my friend’s voice and this particular exercise came from a very

26:33

exploring a very type of vocal exercise i used to do as a teenager

26:39

um where i tried really hard to get rid of my accent of the venezuelan speaking

26:45

english and so i used to do this kind of imitation of other people’s pronunciations to like

26:51

try to erase uh myself i guess and also

26:56

um and and plus and since i did this work i’ve been really interested in different ways of exploring sort of like

27:03

displacements in this location and for me this continued on

27:11

different ways around with written language for example here this is a title work

27:18

recurring sun in which uh different lines of a poem appear one after the next

27:25

uh and the work the poem is a six six words it’s a six line poem that plays

27:31

continuously in a loop um it’s actually kind of hard to read in the documentation some apologies for that um

27:37

but in this work i particularly started getting interested in how

27:42

language works as a video and specifically

27:49

how it works as a as a video in certain when it’s playing in a sort of in a time-based installation in which like

27:56

any viewer enters the work at any point of the of the text being displayed or

28:03

which is like kind of an interesting it’s uh interest specifically actually more specifically with video and how

28:09

in the interactions with the work i started getting interested in

28:14

viewers um entering at any point of the narrative

28:20

um which to me became kind of a a very

28:25

[Music] recurring thought that i had in my work of always considering

28:30

so the sense of not really nearly that of linearity not having a beginning or an end

28:38

and this continued on to more recent work uh where

28:44

[Music] i continue to work with uh this sort of

28:49

linear this sense exploration of linearity or linearity or at least the clear absence of beginning or n gets a

28:55

little more explicit in my work this piece is titled realer and

29:01

really one of the things that becomes really important for me is that there’s a kind

29:06

of narrative arc that happens in the work but also in the experience of the

29:11

work so at the beginning of the conversation i was talking about how i’m interested in

29:17

how certain technologies and objects embody an experience of displacement and this is kind of what i mean by this

29:25

to me it isn’t entirely about what the text or not just what the text says and

29:30

whatever the image shows but also how the works experience as an installation

29:37

i think that i’d like to create an experience where my viewers are put in a situation where they have to triangulate

29:43

their relationship um to the work and also their relationship

29:49

to the language and the relationship the story it tells and it is not processed triangulation

29:54

that are what i refer to as an experience of displacement and then embody it displacement

30:02

uh don’t move on to the next slide there we go and that says continued on to to

30:10

even more recent work this is a work titled rogue lament which is a

30:15

poem that is written in the form of wi-fi network names

30:21

and it is accessed specifically only when a user search for wi-fi networks on a device

30:27

so there’s a little bit more of this continuation of like sort of an unexpected encounter with the work but

30:32

also just a position where the person has to and

30:38

it’s put in a evaluation of like what it is that they’re encountering

30:44

and sort of like further exploring this this experience of this of a displacement like what is going on why

30:50

why is this text here what is why am i encountered in in this particular

30:55

format and this work really more appointedly explores that because um

31:01

the key thing about it is that it’s intended to uh it works with a battery so it can be

31:07

taken anywhere and it’s i display it primarily in places where

31:12

people search for wi-fi networks in like naturally or already like cafes or

31:19

bus stations or things like that but like uh there is already kind of like a process

31:25

of people going through wi-fi now that happens kind of naturally

31:32

um and um this is sort of moved on to the more

31:37

recent body of work that i’ve uh that i’ve explored

31:42

that i’ve worked on which is a series of images and an exhibition called the mornings in reverse

31:48

and this um this the series of works um

31:54

work a little bit differently in terms of like how to explore this sense of displacement that i described

32:01

because one of the underlying methods or one of the the background

32:07

ways that i’ve or one of one of the underlying themes of this exhibition is that there’s actually there’s a

32:13

[Music] there’s a it works off of this this um

32:20

what you can call that kind of like a a launching pad of considering memory as something

32:26

that is that shifts by each set by each in each moment of remembering that the process

32:33

of recalling damages memories and there is a sort of like a

32:41

process of intense like input of energy to try to remember

32:46

things the way that they are but and not in that intent and process of trying to work to keep

32:52

things alive the things begin to be great as well and

32:58

the all the images and text in this exhibition uh come

33:03

from uh or operate from a a point of view that is sort of a citation process

33:11

meaning that they’re all taking from a specific

33:17

fictional narrative but the fictional narrative is not

33:22

this close to the viewer so throughout this in this citation process

33:28

people are getting ex bits and excerpts of a longer story a longer fictional story but also a fiction story that

33:35

they’re not really getting an entire sense of and

33:41

this is kind of a a way for me to continue to kind of explain the sense of like the viewer having to go through this

33:48

process of triangulation and and and and sort of situating themselves in

33:54

relations to the work that they’re experiencing so that’s

34:00

the short version about it that’s like a little introduction to what i do

34:06

and with having said all of that um i’m really i’m really glad to be here i i’m

34:12

really curious to get um started with asking some questions i’m glad that you got a chance to talk

34:18

about the photo books because i know that you mentioned that you hadn’t really had a chance to talk about

34:23

them a lot before yeah and i also really appreciated you going

34:28

a little bit over what the um what the

34:34

algorithms that you use whether where they are originally be intended for for using

34:40

um yeah well i i think it’s really interesting that we have a lot of themes and ideas that overlap with our

34:47

practices but we approach it very differently um for you it seems like you engage with

34:53

the fragmentary nature of of language or decoding or translating um

35:00

and you talk about you know this the shift for the the viewer into displacement and

35:06

in many ways i think that this work at the agg um does something similar

35:14

um as i am interested in things out of place and enlarging tiny details that

35:19

can maybe hint towards certain things but my work is very um

35:24

almost completely formless but you kind of give a hint of what we might be

35:29

seeing so that like specific work that you just showed that um a sunset is a sunrise in

35:35

reverse the parenthesis of my day opened against my will to sleep before dawn and would

35:42

close against my will to sleep after dusk even just saying that out loud also

35:47

leads me to another question about how your title works um because

35:53

the titles of my works is very um important to the

35:58

the intention of of the work and using algorithms um but they can also be seen as like

36:04

fragments of the artwork so it can either help to plant an idea

36:11

um or maybe even blur the meaning further so yeah what like what it where do you

36:17

stand what are your thoughts yeah that’s i’m glad that you’re bringing that up because i kind of wanted to

36:22

start talking a little bit about that too because we both kind of use uh

36:28

algorithms similarly and i brought up this i brought this image with me because this is

36:34

kind of shows you like the back the skeleton of how my images are made and

36:40

there is sort of a big underlying part of it is the the abusive tool that um

36:47

where i give a a field a vector field these sort of

36:52

reference points of like color and then the computer using its own algorithm and some thinking

36:58

uh like parameters um tries to triangulate what the gradient

37:06

will be like from this point to this point and from this point to this point and so on and so forth so that’s

37:11

that’s a little bit how i use uh the kind of like i guess like algorithms in my work

37:16

um but i was actually but i was thinking that for for you there’s almost like a

37:23

in the way at least that that you you interact with it’s pretty restrictive

37:30

well i wouldn’t call it restrict about what i would say is that you actually cannot take them kind of literally in a sense which i think is interesting

37:36

and like in the in the sense of like near as neighbor being like you kind of like you draw meaning from the name of

37:43

it and you also draw a meaning you almost you’re in your papers which i uh maybe people some some folks in the

37:50

audience might have had the chance to read um you even

37:55

give a certain amount of personality to them

38:00

i mean it’s interesting i feel like i preach this all the time i’ve been thinking about it a lot about

38:06

how we we forget that algorithms and programs like photoshop are made by human beings

38:13

so i kind of have this visual in my head of like a think tank of people sitting around a

38:19

table and saying what makes a good image and um what should we

38:24

make the default settings of these like you know programs and and

38:30

algorithms as they’re building and creating these these systems um and so i start to think

38:38

about those specific people and their own you know like what they value in a as a

38:44

good image or what they value and being a user of the program and so it

38:50

it’s hard for me to separate those creators personalities that are just kind of fed into the algorithms

38:59

and so that’s why when i give a lot of um thoughts and maybe almost think of it in

39:05

an extremely linear way i i do that because it allows me to

39:10

question even like what do i value in an image or an artwork and so when i when i’m

39:17

sampling these images and cropping and expanding details at the same time hiding them

39:23

or hiding others it’s it’s constantly asking why

39:29

and i think this is very specific to digital technology although it

39:34

it kind of can happen with analog processes but that’s sort of why i think of

39:41

yeah personalities of algorithms and just a conventional use of parameters

39:47

yeah now that’s nice to hear because i was actually going to go back to your question about you’re asking me how i title my works

39:54

and uh i okay so the way that i title works is

40:01

it’s funny because i tend to [Music] work

40:06

with my work because there’s something there’s a there’s a huge amount of proximity to

40:13

personal experience in my work it’s very it takes a lot from my just from like things that i’ve lived and

40:19

one of the ways that i deal with that is i actually fictionalize a lot of the things that i reference and

40:26

therefore there’s a kind of like an author real voice or sent like a sense of like

40:33

i’m separate from the voice that’s right that’s written if that makes sense and so there’s like

40:39

it in that way is sort of a little bit similar to a sort of a conventional writing

40:45

form and that you um there’s a there’s a kind of understanding of the authors not the

40:51

voice is the character and what i try to shape and work with is sort of the is

40:58

is like how much of that narrator or speaker my public interacts with

41:05

and but it’s nice to hear it you talk about how

41:12

some of your um interests in the algorithms is actually or like at least the language of the

41:18

algorithms is very personal because there’s like a it’s i was wondering if

41:25

you did a similar process like i was wondering if like you were like oh am i

41:30

is it this is actually like next interpretation of like

41:36

how algorithms like think or is that kind of like a fiction

41:42

not like is that a fictionalized person encountering the um yeah the algorithms

41:48

i’m not sure if it’s so important that these photographs are situated

41:54

in or like that people know that they’re from a personal archive because they’re not that’s not clear you

42:01

don’t see you don’t come into the space and think wow this is a very personal work

42:06

um but it is because it comes from my own images but like i could apply this technique to

42:13

any photographs that i don’t have a connection to but maybe the personal does create for

42:20

me like a stronger relationship for me in in the making of the work and i think

42:25

that is important for me to be excited about about the work that i am doing

42:31

um but yeah you’re right in that in my thesis paper as a support as a supporting paper

42:37

for this work i do share memories and some details about the original photographs um

42:44

that these images kind of came from and i think that’s kind of central to

42:50

photography in that this practice kind of hinges on the transference of of memory like

42:56

oscillating from between like control and chance but that memory that is created is

43:03

um it’s not um it’s not a moment that is replete it’s it’s formless and it

43:09

continues um to evolve over time and when i talk about this idea of like

43:15

images are within images um you know it’s like this personal archive

43:22

in a it’s like a time capsule i don’t know if you’ve ever played this game but i recently played it with some

43:28

close friends who i haven’t seen in a while actually some friends in montreal and it’s where you think of a random

43:35

very specific date and then you scroll through your phone to find that date and

43:40

then share the photo um and sometimes it’s really funny but then other times it just sparks like a

43:46

conversation of like oh that’s what you did on you know april 2nd

43:52

2018. you know and you you can like kind of go back and we’re often like i mean

43:58

for me my my google phones go back in to like 2008

44:05

so it’s like you forget that you take these photographs um

44:12

but yeah so it is hard to take away the personal but i mean how do you how do you use the

44:18

personal in your work well first of all that game terrifies me like

44:24

like like scrolling through like it’s showing but like i know that’s too scary to me

44:31

i’m playing with myself like i i’ll i’ll be a little self-conscious to do with

44:37

someone else uh well okay so i’m really happy that you’re asking this because um i was

44:43

gonna ask you about this as well so like this because

44:49

i’m interested in working with memory as it’s experienced subjectively so

44:55

for example um like in the mornings in reverse um

45:01

there this particular poem uh which was um

45:07

maybe i’ll just quickly read it so i i never read my poetry so this is weird

45:13

because i just dragged into the press intense the memory of a pairing blade concealed

45:19

within a folded newspaper is a foreign event nobody said that the past turns into

45:26

plasticine figurines and that one’s own hands when they reach with thirst into

45:31

the past tense when they anticipate the familiar edges of shelf memories dent everything with

45:38

the weight of each grasp i fear through my skin’s intuition that what i hold in my hands i haven’t helped

45:45

before and then the strangeness of my own past to myself betrays habitual

45:50

remembrance i have to forget to remember well so in this form like what what i’m

45:56

interested in what i mean by how memories experienced subjectively for me i’m interested in liking what happens

46:02

when things are remembered and misremembered and how memories change over time and that’s

46:09

kind of what i what i mean by like how retrieving memories damages memories

46:15

um and and so like the process of recalling something

46:22

blends in a certain amount of fabrication as well because you kind of miss filling the missing gaps

46:29

but for you you have this interest in archives and this is interesting for me because archives are

46:36

instinctively less mutable than subjective memory because it’s subjective memory is

46:42

tied to a person and a arc upstate to an actual object

46:48

and i was also thinking that like subjective memory and archives then kind of become like analogs

46:55

kind of to spoke like subjective memories and analog to spoken language and archives

47:01

is kind of an analog to written language because you want to start to this one site with speaker and the other one

47:07

started to an object in posterity and for me one of the things that is interesting about the written language

47:13

is that the fact that the ability to interpret its meaning is subject to the context in

47:19

which the reader finds the text right and so there’s a kind of fragility to

47:25

meaning despite the concreteness of the thing and i was wondering if for you something similar happens with archives

47:31

like is there a fragile equality to them for you and what is if that makes sense to you

47:38

like what does that fragility mean to you yeah yeah i think um

47:45

i think there’s something boundless in the analog image and maybe even more with the digital image i think the

47:51

difference between digital and analog is just really a technological shift it’s not that one is better or

47:58

like than the other but that there’s something that happens when they coincide

48:04

um and so when i think about the again with my when i think about the

48:09

fragmentary nature of my work like a glitch on a photograph or a sample of an image or the shimmer like what we’re

48:16

seeing right now of the line of glass beads to me kind of function as an interruption

48:22

so this interruption is perhaps a it’s the the interruption between

48:27

digital and analog or maybe it’s just an interruption of thought um like thought of of um

48:35

of memory but kind of what you’re saying and i know we’ve talked about it before

48:40

but it’s that book called the gestures of writing and lines and surfaces by um

48:46

v lim flusser write the gesture of writing and he basically if this is uh

48:53

yeah yeah it it provides an analysis of our understanding of the world that is

49:00

constructed through basically two forms um writing and images which might

49:06

like one might consider um fundamental turning points in the human

49:11

culture and he kind of talks about how images or abstractions of reality which

49:16

i i agree with and i think it’s really hard to separate the question of

49:21

abstraction when talking about photographs but there’s a quote here i think it’s related

49:28

it says he says if we lose our ability to decode the images our lives will

49:33

instead become a function of images and our mi our imagination instead turns

49:39

into a form of hallucination

49:45

i don’t know it kind of has this plan on memory to me

49:50

and just how like uh images are just filled with like one image can be filled with um a

49:56

multitude of of memories yeah and

50:02

yeah i guess that’s kind of that’s it’s kind of like what i was wondering if you

50:10

could elaborate on anything thanks for doing so because i i do find that um

50:17

that there’s a kind that even though you’re you’re working with these everybody’s

50:23

archives images just the kind of like mutability to to the archive that you work with

50:30

that i that i appreciate a lot because there’s a sort of um

50:37

you know there’s a very subject still a very kind of subjective interaction with with the thing itself and i find it i

50:45

think that i find that kind of interesting because to me kind of one of the interesting things about working with memory was or is um

50:52

how it works like more like within like someone’s head um

50:59

but for it’s nice to see you kind of enjoy interacting with how that applies to how you interact with

51:06

the actual physical uh or the actual archive right

51:13

well i think i mean a big part of my research over the course of my mfa was about thinking about language and

51:19

how it can be tactile and fragile and although it’s not extremely present in here in this environment you know

51:27

where behind me it was the starting point of the work and i think

51:33

when i think about um i guess like we mentioned a little bit about my the

51:40

thesis and i had a really great time uh writing that because essentially i

51:46

had to write a thesis paper about photographs and it just made sense that i used language like i kind of it was a

51:54

requirement but it also i got really into describing and and talking about the memory and like

52:00

being really personal about sharing um what the original photograph kind of

52:06

meant to me um but then when you kind of mix it with this like that text doesn’t exist in

52:13

this space um maybe it should maybe maybe the the two

52:19

don’t like to like go hand in hand um but i think the way that i was thinking

52:24

about language was this like thinking about the fragility of it and

52:30

that it’s hard to not think about poets because they actively disrupt words and sentences and thrive off the notion that

52:37

language is fragile and they make something beautiful and i think i i see this work as like a

52:44

a giant poem like a poem without words um you you’ve used um a lot of images and

52:52

text in your work and i wonder if you thought about that exploration of language that might be separate from

52:58

images um you know i think for me like in this

53:04

work there is a play with language um because of the titles because i i use

53:09

a broken system of the word like a very like basic generator to create

53:17

a written description of of the words um but some people like quite honestly

53:22

might miss that until they go home and maybe like look at the brochure if they take it and then

53:27

notice these weird titles so there might be a separate experience with the viewers

53:33

um like viewing the images and reading the text that is associated with the images

53:40

so i’m kind of curious how what your thoughts are on on the play between image and text

53:48

um well for me the yeah it’s

53:57

yeah it’s funny because i for me like just thinking

54:03

there is kind of a separation between yes what like what the text

54:08

is and how it operates as an image and

54:14

um you know it like i try to make it so that like in in

54:22

in when folks interact with language in

54:28

am i working in my work and i think you do the same but you do it differently is

54:33

is i i try the the text to kind of make sense in

54:41

how and and how out of place it is that

54:46

makes sense yeah so like i one of the reasons why i like working with the language written languages that

54:53

it the fact that it’s not inside of a textbook

54:58

uh or in book or whatever or conventional reading place where somebody would experience

55:04

like written like literature in our poetry is that then the con the meaning

55:10

of the text makes sense in the context that it’s encountered so it kind of gives it a bit of a side specificity and

55:16

so it it kind of ties the language to the object and to the place where it’s

55:21

experienced and i try to do that in in my work and i think that kind of

55:28

happens also with the way that you title your work because there’s a kind of suddenly because it’s so removed from

55:35

its context it kind of leaves the viewer at a in a place of like wondering

55:41

like what what what is it what’s its origin and there’s a kind of a similar kind of experience of

55:46

displacement of like okay look what this there’s something that’s not working here so that’s kind of how i view that

55:53

um and but it’s funny that you’re talking about your your paper and

56:00

because i i also find that that you’re in your in your writing you’re really

56:08

really really really generous um like really talking about about

56:14

how much like you’re talking about you’re talking about everything i know exactly how your work is made like i

56:19

know like i know precisely like every bit of like process that went into them and i

56:27

kind of appreciate that to be honest because i put that photo here it’s like in this work like i just i really like

56:33

seeing what i i really like showing a little bit like how things

56:40

like what what what are the steps what like what one of the things and hug not

56:45

there’s something interesting to me about that that yeah sometimes have difficulties articulating and i was wondering maybe what it like what did

56:52

what meaning that is there for you to like be so like yeah i mean the process

56:57

yeah i mean artists take keep secrets all the time although we don’t really say secrets we just rather speak in a

57:04

secret code that only insiders will understand they’re one of my favorite writers in

57:10

art um amy sealman kind of writes about this in her essay on color

57:15

but revealing my secrets and sharing step by step processes of how i create what i create

57:21

i think just allows for every detail to be present and talked about you know we

57:26

can talk about the memories of the photographs we can conceptualize about the tools that were used to create

57:33

the photographs we can discuss the fact that making art can happen outside of the

57:39

studio and outside of the making and i think that um

57:46

i don’t know how this will land but i think that secrets can reveal what we value

57:53

and yeah i don’t know i yeah i mean and again

57:59

like it’s not present in the space it’s really in

58:05

when you read the text or like the paper and then you’re in the space and you see it

58:10

um so like maybe my work should exist in like a photo book where you kind of have

58:16

all of you know all of it because i do struggle with like using

58:22

like sharing like having all that information and the i guess what you said like generosity in

58:28

the way that i wrote about this work for the paper how that can be present in the space

58:34

um that’s something i haven’t really like figured out yet because i really i do enjoy

58:41

sharing that and i enjoy writing um just how they kind of

58:47

coincide in the same space i find that really difficult you obviously don’t you do it really well

58:54

that’s really nice of you no but it’s funny because i i really um

58:59

[Music] i don’t know i i like the way that you describe it if there is meaning in what

59:07

it’s in there’s meaning in the details and i guess there’s meaning in the secrets in

59:12

the sense of like there’s meaning for you like there’s like you kind of show what

59:18

it is that matters to you in the process when you share those things and

59:24

i find it really difficult to sometimes not talk about persons in my work sometimes because like

59:30

i i really think i i think similarly to you um but uh sometimes it’s someone to bombard

59:37

everyone with like very my new shadow america’s like but i think for you that

59:44

that description is really it’s really i think that’s a layer

59:49

of like i said generosity that kind of you know for a body of work that could

59:54

easily read on on first glance as like that there’s

1:00:00

not a lot of the artists present because there’s so much process there’s a lot of of you in those processes and those

1:00:06

decisions and that to me that is where i started getting it right so it’s getting really interesting where i can kind of see and peek into

1:00:13

the details of like where where you are in the world i also have something to add i might say

1:00:20

that it’s it feels maybe the same gesture of writing a diary

1:00:26

because for me like i’m starting to lose um

1:00:32

the original details of that photograph because they’re just becoming their own images themselves

1:00:38

um separate from where they came from and so for like the photo crop kind of

1:00:43

enhances those details that can trigger a memory of the day that the

1:00:49

thought i took the photograph but now i might be mistaken and you know in fact it’s not the same

1:00:55

memory that’s attached to the photo that i initially took but it still has

1:01:00

this capacity to generate um like a deep emotional response and

1:01:07

it kind of shifts something else like now looking back at these images you’ll be very different than

1:01:13

where they originally came from for me and i think that’s what happens when you start to stretch the photograph like for

1:01:20

example in this one it’s hard to see in the documentation because i think the scale and the types

1:01:27

of photo papers that i’m using you can see where there’s a point where the pixels start to have edges

1:01:34

and the image becomes formless and the color kind of absorbs or

1:01:40

or like bathes the space in light so it just becomes this other thing

1:01:46

but i don’t i don’t think that i still believe that there’s images within images

1:01:52

um it it just doesn’t have to be the like correct one like i don’t who cares it

1:01:57

doesn’t matter um but like do you do you think that an image can exist as uh

1:02:04

as like a single entity or do you agree that there’s images within images

1:02:10

what are your thoughts well i mean to me is always um you know

1:02:15

in terms of uh an image you know i think it kind of like protects an image in the same

1:02:20

category of a thing in terms of that there’s an interpretive

1:02:26

process that happens between uh but between interpretive phrases happens in the viewer when we’re interacting with

1:02:33

it and that kind of mutability to me is interesting uh and

1:02:39

and i can i guess that’s kind of a as far as i would go in terms of like considering an image within an image

1:02:44

like if i’m interpreting it the way that you’re explaining it correctly

1:02:50

um yeah i i mean in fact

1:02:57

sorry that this actually now that i’m talking about this i’m thinking maybe this is actually an interesting segue

1:03:03

into the last little bit of uh that i wanted to talk to you before

1:03:08

opening into questions i’m just keeping an eye on time um and maybe this is a prompt for folks

1:03:14

if anyone has any questions that they want to start preparing uh i know it’s the time but before opening it

1:03:20

up this particular image um i asked you to share with me because uh i wanted

1:03:26

what one of the comments that came into your in your uh one of the

1:03:31

comments that i was setting your defense i believe it was susan robson who brought it up or it was a question i

1:03:37

thought it was a really good question which was a discussion of like whether you saw

1:03:43

the viewer as an algorithm in the terms of like you ask them are you putting us in a position of like

1:03:50

having to interpret these images and i i did a funny little exercise of

1:03:56

sharing this image to people who’ve never seen your your uh your your work uh and ask them to tell me

1:04:04

what they thought it was um so i’ll give you the quick list of it okay and i asked i also asked them for

1:04:10

the level of certainty [Music] out of their description so

1:04:16

the first one the first one blew my mind one person said it’s a corrupted pixel oh my god

1:04:23

which is kind of okay mind-blowing it’s pretty close

1:04:28

yeah a smog smok sky in beijing medium certainty

1:04:35

zoomed in skin uncertain section of the sky at sunset

1:04:42

medium certainty and skin under the light high certainty

1:04:49

that’s amazing there you go i think that’s my next project

1:04:56

uh yeah well in that note i’m gonna open it up and

1:05:04

uh i’m gonna ask nicole’s question here so

1:05:11

my question relates i’m sorry for anybody that that wants to see the questions in the show it’s in the chat right now

1:05:17

so my question relates to audience reception slash i’m struck by how you’re both the

1:05:23

blowing you both deploy a chance in your work by leaving some of the generative processed

1:05:29

up to algorithms and the like i noted that meg you talked about the work being deceptive in a way jose

1:05:35

andres you mentioned this idea of fictionalizing the language in the work

1:05:41

with leaving room for uncertainty have you ever been surprised by the way that your audience responds to your work

1:05:47

have there ever been chance encounters in interactions with audiences

1:05:54

how do you feel about that um i love hearing like what you just mentioned i love hearing people respond

1:06:03

and um however whatever they see and i think that um

1:06:10

this kind of work really does welcome all these different interpretations

1:06:15

um of different readings um

1:06:21

i’m just trying to like reread it um

1:06:26

yeah do you wanna do you wanna respond i don’t know yeah well in terms of like

1:06:32

yeah yeah of course um and in terms of um the sort of incorporation this

1:06:38

incorporation of chance to me it’s pretty important it might work in the sense that

1:06:46

uh kind of like generally speaking i tend to try to approach working with technology with a certain amount of

1:06:53

um latitude in terms of what i when i mean but that is there is um

1:07:00

something more interesting to letting things letting the system operate in a way that

1:07:07

you might not find it predictable um

1:07:13

especially because especially when one works with technology one tends to sort of interpret the interaction between

1:07:19

user and technology as being one of control of like you know you yield the technology to give you a result

1:07:26

and to me me working with technology in general becomes more our processes

1:07:32

actually even not just technology but like even a rigid process becomes more interesting when

1:07:38

that um where the result becomes open-ended because it

1:07:45

then you have room for interpreting um and for working with what happened

1:07:50

through chance rather than setting out to work to get a specific result right

1:07:59

that’s good that’s kind of how i feel about that is there anything else you want to add

1:08:05

no i guess when i think about chance in relation to photography almost everything has the potential to

1:08:13

be interfered with and change the outcome of an image so the uninfected and the affected kind

1:08:20

of adds to the sense of um like photography’s lucidity and um that’s why

1:08:29

for me it’s really exciting um [Music] but

1:08:38

nestor krueger asks my apologies if this is too obvious but i am interested to hear what attracts

1:08:45

the two of you to the gradient and i’m gonna let you go for that first if you want

1:08:53

sure yeah um [Music] i guess the

1:08:58

because the work has no lines or edges um and that they’re just these flat gradients of color some more broken than

1:09:05

others the curation of photographs that i choose for the that i chose for the final exhibition was

1:09:13

purely a discussion based on this question of the gradient or based on color

1:09:18

so for me um during the process i kind of had a limited control of what samples

1:09:24

i was finding in my archive and it’s simple to describe something like this that you’re seeing this yellow or orange

1:09:31

or light colors in the work because those are typically colors of light and when searching for

1:09:37

these moments of error light leaks are the easiest to spot and there usually is kind of a gradient

1:09:43

is where the the film negative is being stretched and light kind of seeps into

1:09:49

the emulsion and it it has this different gradients of intensities

1:09:56

but other colors kind of come from chemistry failures and the analog processes and of course there’s like a

1:10:02

black one that is almost absent or complete absorption of like visible light

1:10:08

so gradient to me um in this environment kind of suggests an

1:10:15

atmosphere of something that um [Music]

1:10:20

that that’s uh it’s so hard not to like

1:10:26

use the word beautiful but there is there is something that i’m like obviously

1:10:32

like interested in the way that they look um

1:10:37

but it could be like it’s hard to pinpoint what that gradient is so something is

1:10:42

like either really out of focus or it’s something like what your friend had

1:10:48

mentioned of seeing sunsets or seeing a sky um that there’s a tip like a

1:10:54

a very simple gradient in nature that we see especially when we take

1:11:00

you know with smartphones it kind of like amplifies that um

1:11:07

so i like the gradient and i’m actually i’m kind of curious to

1:11:12

see like what this photo would look like versus doing a gradient on

1:11:18

like painting a gradient through photoshop and seeing the differences or

1:11:23

or if there is any because again those algorithms and generators would come come into play

1:11:30

and maybe it would create an identical or something close um

1:11:36

what are your thoughts on the gradient um well nestor i think that question is too

1:11:42

obvious sorry i’m not going to answer i’m getting i’m kidding uh

1:11:47

i i’m only saying this because i know nestor um

1:11:53

i began working with with the gradients um i’m gonna go back to the

1:11:59

my images at the very beginning um the first images that i started working

1:12:04

with were these text-based ones and i was originally trying to

1:12:09

[Music] um it kind of worked i started working as a bit of um

1:12:17

a very simple exercise of trying to make a piece of paper look like it had been exposed to science to light damage so

1:12:23

now i can’t just funny i never make the connection it’s similar to you in that sense only then i was working trying to

1:12:29

do a simile of damage by sunlight and so

1:12:35

when that’s kind of what start catalyzing my use or i catalyze my use of gradients to

1:12:40

begin with um similar to eu there’s a there’s obviously an

1:12:48

aesthetic interest but for when i started working on

1:12:54

specifically and trying to do the flexibility or the simulation of degradation of color i was um

1:13:01

part of me was also just trying to [Music]

1:13:07

reproduce or emulate the the process of how color phase or what stages

1:13:14

of decay happen when um a particular ink or particular color is

1:13:20

exposed to sunlight and i was trying to do this to kind of create

1:13:26

to create prints that were a um

1:13:32

sort of an arresting of time in between a state of of

1:13:38

um falling apart and a state of being of how they were printed originally

1:13:43

and i was i was trying to use the this sort of very archival method of printing

1:13:48

as a way to really kind of like you know get it stuck in time

1:13:55

by using by using um the sort of very archival um photo in direct process

1:14:02

um but naturally as i worked with the tool more um i started noticing what things it did um despite my will and

1:14:10

um i started to use the

1:14:16

sort of like gradient composite process to

1:14:22

create simulations of an image out of focus and there is something that you were talking

1:14:28

about in your appreciation of the gradient that i think you and i both share which

1:14:34

is how there’s a sort of like moment of uncertainty of like deciphering what something is

1:14:39

um and that is really

1:14:45

that that’s really what really if like it if i started with cat you’re like the

1:14:50

catalyst of it was like working like to make the simulations when i noticed

1:14:56

that this was happening and the uncertainty of interpretation that’s really what propelled me to continue working on it was when i started

1:15:02

noticing that um it was possible to create these

1:15:08

ambiguous representations of um of a scene or

1:15:16

a place and that there was also not just an ambiguity to the

1:15:22

represented object or scene but also an immediate after what how the image is

1:15:28

constructed as well um and so that they’re great like working with a gradient and this

1:15:36

with this particular process that’s really what i i latched on to continue working on what

1:15:41

the reason why i continued working on uh on these images was pretty much that and

1:15:48

the other thing that this is just like a really basic thing is i really enjoyed not working i was working with vectors

1:15:55

and but i wasn’t working with any hard lines and you know and the lines that were being formed or

1:16:01

suggestions of lines where it’s by like literally putting two gradients near each other right so

1:16:06

there was something really fun about that because i used to paint like a million years ago and it

1:16:13

was just kind of fun to work with um

1:16:19

i have a question here by andrew uh thank you both so much for your generosity and work thank you

1:16:27

uh i’m wondering if you could discuss the dream space to exhibit these works there are so many possibilities for

1:16:33

audience encounters with these works with billboards billboards sorry as relation exchanges as books etc just

1:16:41

curious how you imagine these works existing outside of the gallery and

1:16:46

meg is gone well i wanted to grab one of these books

1:16:52

[Laughter] that’s why i left i totally see these existing outside the

1:16:58

gallery and because i want people to interact with them and i

1:17:04

think of these as books i i’m curious how they would travel as books like put them

1:17:10

through um like book slots or you know people carrying them in

1:17:16

their tote bags and you know this like travel and how that would change

1:17:23

the um kind of quality and like you know how like a book is really

1:17:30

well loved and it kind of has these like like a broken spine or like you know frayed edges i feel like that’s what

1:17:36

would happen to these photographs on the mdf um

1:17:42

so that i i can see existing it’s harder to

1:17:47

situate these like extreme um flat aluminum

1:17:53

prints that’s not on a wall um but also there is kind of the

1:18:01

something could be interesting if it it wasn’t in a controlled environment because nothing’s

1:18:08

protecting the photographs it’s just the the prince so they easily

1:18:14

get damaged um and uh yeah i mean it’s it would be a full

1:18:21

circle i guess because the photographs come from moments of error

1:18:27

um so if something kind of disrupted that

1:18:32

it would make sense um but for your aunt your question andrew i

1:18:38

think it’s these things that um i would like to see in backpacks and

1:18:43

tote bags and um yeah i would like to see it outside the gallery

1:18:49

yeah intensive for my work um there is uh

1:18:56

sorry i’m like trying to go forward to my images in the show here they’re one of

1:19:02

the things that i i was very excited about for these particular

1:19:08

images was um the the

1:19:14

control over like the how people related to them in terms of their

1:19:21

relationship people’s no in the work and and the answers well

1:19:26

a lot of the prints are fairly big um i believe the biggest one is this one’s 50 by 50

1:19:33

um and the elements vary obviously um but anyway seriously

1:19:38

there’s a there’s a my intention was to kind of like have the images meet the viewers

1:19:45

like with a fairly sizable scale

1:19:51

and that may not necessarily be something that happens in a gallery only it’s easier to do in a gallery space um

1:19:58

i and for those images in particular i i

1:20:03

really i can envision them existing in other forms as well but

1:20:10

the main the main um parameter would have to be something

1:20:16

that’s where people are are still able to encounter them kind of at an eye

1:20:21

level and that could be in a variety of different situations not necessarily at

1:20:27

a gallery space but that kind of like closeness to the works is important

1:20:32

to me at least for now um in terms of the

1:20:38

um oh there i mean this work is intended to roam around right of course you know just wherever

1:20:44

it shows up it shows up um and uh realer has always been also

1:20:49

very similar in terms of the the kind of relationship to to body and

1:20:56

work that i have it’s it’s intended to kind of like meet you at a

1:21:01

at a very kind like a visceral level um so [Music]

1:21:07

in short answer to to the questions like it’s as as long as like

1:21:12

that is like the most important parameter for me um not so much the the

1:21:17

venue but definitely the the one-to-one kind of relationship is important

1:21:25

thank you for those questions yeah thank you and um

1:21:31

yeah i don’t see any more questions in the chat i know we’ve been keeping people for a bit of a time we’re heading

1:21:36

into an hour and a half really yeah that’s what happens when you put two people who ramble together

1:21:43

um so maybe i’ll open it up to uh nicole once again and i’ll stop sharing

1:21:54

well i just want to take a a really brief moment to thank um both of you meg and jose

1:22:02

andreas for sharing with us this experience of a dialogue between artists in the studio

1:22:09

between colleagues between friends uh you’re both so generous uh in the way that you share your practice with

1:22:16

all of us who have joined the conversation today but even as you say i’m really struck by how you’re keen on

1:22:22

sharing your practice and and your process with uh viewers as they

1:22:27

stop by the gallery to see your your work as it were um so uh on that note if

1:22:33

you are joining us from somewhere that is close to guelph nearest neighbor is up until june 19th

1:22:40

and i strongly encourage you to stop by i don’t think i need to tell anyone that uh it’s very much

1:22:46

a different experience um [Music] having the chance to be bathed in the

1:22:51

light of those gradient colors as you described it so aptly meg

1:22:57

um and i also wanted to just mention that uh later this month we have another

1:23:04

exhibition coming up by uh mfa uh student rehab essay um whose exhibition

1:23:10

is uh i dream of a soft oasis and this opens on june 29th we are so um

1:23:18

grateful for our partnership with the school of fine art music at the university of guelph that gives us an

1:23:23

opportunity to connect with um students to show their work and so uh um

1:23:31

we’re really thankful for that partnership that brings exhibitions like this uh to the gallery

1:23:37

um i also thought i’d mention quickly that we have another online conversation coming up between

1:23:42

uh artist gail uyagaki kabluna and curator taco the partridge who

1:23:48

the the exhibition they worked on together is also up at the art gallery of guelph

1:23:54

and that talk is happening on june 14th um so i invite all of you to join us for

1:23:59

that um of course i need to thank our funders the ontario arts council and the canada council for the arts um

1:24:06

last but not least uh um my sincere thanks for everyone who joined us today and for your questions uh i must thank

1:24:13

um meg and jose andreas again thank you so much for sharing this conversation

1:24:20

with us today thank you for giving us the space to do thank you so much yeah absolutely

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