Ela Boyd // Artist Statement
I wonder what happens in the realm of ideas that is lost in the translation of physical space? Rather than regarding the virtual as a synthetic signifier to a real object, can it be understood as an actual object in itself? By mediating sculptural and digital materials, the interplay of ephemeral projections and actual forms, I compose installations that function as perceptual interfaces. I employ methods of collapsing and expanding time and space, mapping the intangible onto the physical and generating awareness of seeing the self seeing. These methodologies are based in a discourse of phenomenological issues regarding ontology, perception and consciousness. How can the object transcend itself? Can the object have multiple modalities of being and ultimately function as a subject? How can we transcend our perceptual framework? This is increasingly more relevant today when technological systems like the Internet, telepresence, web cameras and smart objects shift the subject/object relationship while informing our sense of incorporeality. Is it possible that in addition to the world shifting based on how you perceive it, the actual object itself changes simply because you observe it? With the use of superimposition as a way of simultaneous seeing, I attempt to evoke an experience that fuses various modes of visual perception. Using a synthesis of presences and appearances to convert the perceptual machine into an imaging faculty, the interface becomes praxis for a conscious occurrence of perceiving and creating simultaneously. Hence producing a paradigm that uses intentionality to turn the passive viewer into an active architect of the perceived world.