DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/S6V7-6Y89
Defense Date
2018
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Sculpture + Extended Media
First Advisor
Matt King
Second Advisor
Kendall Buster
Third Advisor
Lily Cox-Richard
Fourth Advisor
Senta Achée
Fifth Advisor
Michael Jones McKean
Abstract
Path is a collaborative system that developed over the course of five months of studio activity and continued through the duration of the exhibition. The system’s main collaborators were a land snail native to eastern North America (Neohelix albolabris), myself, and a digital cellular automaton. These prime agents interwove processes and exchanges between one another into a complex network of folded fractal feedback loops. Cyclic processes produced artifacts and infrastructures to support communication between the components and agents of Path. As a whole, Path spoke to the possibilities for interspecies, cyber-physical, and ecological collaboration to create an emergent landscape.
The iteration of Path that follows in this document extends the collaborative system onto the space of the page. Path.txt is a concrete poem drawn from personal notes and observations from field and studio research. The composition of the text was generated through one of the processes at play in the production of Path as a gallery installation. The arrangement of text follows an algorithmically determined sequence initiated by the slime trail of N. albolabris. Following this textual iteration, a section of images and text outline the processes that operated in Path as a gallery installation.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-11-2018