SGC - Mediated

Some of the panel presentations were pretty heady. Sometimes I really like heady, but it's tiring. Or maybe I should say it's "filling." I only made it through part of the Friday afternoon panel I attended, which was called "Mediated."


"Atomic Clock" by Lance Winn
Three transparent layers, attached to the second hand, minute hand and hour hand of a clock

First, artist and University of Delaware assistant professor Lance Winn gave a wonderfully nerdy (and I mean that in the best possible way) talk about our mediated experiences as 21st century human beings and our role as mediators in our art. He raised some great questions:
- How do our senses mediate our experiences
- What does it mean that so many of our emotions are about mediated things (via internet, TV, etc.) that have nothing to do with our everyday lives
- How does our experience of the world come back out in our art, e.g. how is our experience mediated within us?

Winn spoke of being interested in "failures" in his art making -- failures of the human hand, failures of tools, and failures in materials. That was very interesting and helpful for a perfectionist like me to hear, an invitation for me to be less critical when I experience such failures and to incorporate those failures into my work more readily. Maybe even to look for the failures. Maybe those failures are actually the portals into something new and unimagined. This was a great takeaway for me.


"Charlie Rose" TV tracing by Brant Schuller

Brant Schuller, whose work I had previously seen (maybe in Art On Paper?) showed samples of some of his tracings of television programs. He tapes vellum to his TV screen and makes tracings as he watches a show or movie, transforming his viewing experience from passive to active and re-mediating what is already a mediated experience. The drawings that result, which trace movement as well as objects, look nothing like TV programs and are quite interesting to see.

Next up was Deborah Barkun, but I couldn't take in any more. And I wanted to get over to the Landmark Theater to hear an artist talk by Kerry James Marshall...