Lethe

Lethe is a video installation in which a loop of Social Education film is manipulated programmatically. The loop features different major events in the lives of the fictional women such as marriage, spousal disagreements, choosing whether to have children or not. These events are manipulated by either delaying video frames, showing repeated actions, or by abstracting the scene such that the figures are shapeless masses of black, white and grey. As the video loops though the scenes, the understanding of the events happening is modified for the viewers, such that two viewers, who saw the loop at different times, would have a different understanding of how they perceived the emotions of events that are happening.
Lethe 2010
Video Installation

LVMH Pre-submission

This is my team’s pre-submission for the 2009-2010 LVMH/Parsons competition where we created a documentary sample based on puppetry research. Completed with Chien-Pai “Bobby” Lin, Ya-Han Tsui.

CongressTweets

Collaborating with Andrea Bradshaw, we created an interactive data visualization of the Twitter habits of United States Congressmen.

We used data from the Twitter API, the Sunlight Foundation and the New York Times Congressional API. Using the interface, users could compare attendance at votes, voting with or against party records, according to twitter activity, represented region, party and gender.

Our project was featured on a Swiss data visualization site, +DataVisualization.ch and noticed by Tweet Congress and New York Times Openblog.

I think I miss you

I think I miss you is a video that visits the details of greetings and replaying/re-editing of elements of the relationship between the two female figures as they greet, interact and say farewell. The simple act is revisited and edited in camera, distorting the event and refocusing to a dreamlike, almost memory. This video acts as a meta video as the qualities of hi-8 video and dv- tape and the mechanics of the two recording mediums are interplayed with each other.

Cinderella’s Illuminated Gown

Cinderella’s Illuminated Gown is a fiber optic/LED/fibre, time-based installation that unravels the interstitial state of transformation and ephemeral nature of Cinderella’s Gown. The project focuses on the role of Cinderella’s gown as a portal between the ordinary and the extraordinary.

2010-2011
Fiber Optics, LEDs, Fibre, Steel Rods
Variable Dimensions

Published:
ACM: Interactions Magazine – Embroidered Confessions

Conference Talks:
Critical Themes in Media 2011
MFA DT Thesis site and symposium


Fine Arts/Design MASHUP?

One of the conundrums of being “degreed and pedigreed” is having too many scattered pieces of your life. Each piece is an authentic part of you, but it is different in each iteration of life experience. This sentiment should resound faithfully as I collapse the feelings from leaving the MFA program at Concordia and matriculating at Parsons. Each piece is a part of the whole that is Laura Simpson and my art practice.  It is a bit overly serious to say so boldly that I have an “art practice.” If I was to unpack my art practice, it would be composed of experimentation and planning with room for serendipity.

I keep rediscovering myself. It’s almost as if I record myself talking and forget what was said until I go back to listen.

You don’t wake up and INNOVATE!

Right now, I’m wrangling my thesis paper for it’s final iteration, but I took a few minutes to reflect (and procrastinate) on chasing dreams, achieving greatness and innovation.

Yesterday, I had a discussion with a fellow Parsons DT student and we came to a similar conclusion to the idea of “saving the world via design” and the idea behind statements like “go innovate” or “is it innovative enough?”

Singlehandedly, I cannot save the world with design and as an artist, I don’t think I want to either. I do want to passionately experiment and make objects that will exist in the world after I am gone. I tend towards design and art that play with ideas, but are aesthetic and intellectual pursuits rather than a tool to bring drinking water to drought stricken lands.

I think that I am still contributing to the world. If something innovative comes from my tinkering, then so be it. I don’t prescribe to a notion that greatness is a given after years of working. I do strive for greatness in my field nonetheless. If I get it, it’ll be by making pixels do the wrong thing, finding ways to hack electricity and writing about it.

I was pleased to find a comic that showed my beliefs in such a thoughtful way, from a scientist to a creative technologist/artist/designer/nerd like me.

Marie Curie is right

Leaving behind a studio

I was melancholy about ending my studio practice so shortly after I had gotten it into full swing. Hopefully in the summer I will be able to resume my practice again in another space.

My Gowanus/ParkSlope Studio in memoriam:

Mozilla University Design Challenge 09

Parsons participated in the 2009 Mozilla Design Challenge with two other universities, all addressing the issue of how to visualize the user’s browser history in a meaningful way.

My solution was the Unique History Timeline.

The Unique History Timeline is focused on
helping the user to remember unique sites that he or she might have visited and uses visual and timeline queues to help refresh their memory.

The Unique History Timeline has the following features:

  • Thumbnail screen shots of individual sites
  • A List view and Timeline view for user preference
  • Separates frequently visited sites from those unique one off sites, collapsing the listings in the history window for quicker browsing.

Scribbling Speech

Scribbling Speech is an organic performance and installation. The artist writes all of her responses to interaction and stimulus in marker on the wall of the performance space, creating historical trails of the experience. Each of the columns are the height of the artist, to keep the footprint of the piece human size.
The Performance took place Feb. 18th 2009 from 10am-6:30pm.

Logically Speaking

Logically Speaking combines the frustrations, desires, estrangement and fantastic quotidian observations of an artist abroad. These words are paired with logical notation and proofs that resolve easily in comparison.