Time for an update! With only 18 days left until the official opening of the MFA exhibition, there is plenty of sweat, tears, and panic to go round. I have been experiencing some hardcore anxiety as well! An unfortunate yet unavoidable delay meant my CNC was out of commission for close to a week--a devastating amount of time in student time--but the issue is now resolved and I'm attempting to break the record cuts-per-day!

I have also officially crossed the halfway mark! A total of 25 (and one on the way) cuts means that I have only 20~ left to complete. Additionally, I have over 30 interviews to trudge through! What a time to be alive!

Check out all of the incredible work here: danmmfa.ucsc.edu/
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Well, it's high time for another sporadic update on my creative endeavors. While much has changed since my last post and I am long overdue for an update on my thesis progress, I can with certainty say that it has been a very busy year full of events and excitement that have lended very few opportunities to accurately and succinctly sum it all up. BUT with an MFA exhibition looming at the end of April, here it is.

For a while now, I've been interested in virtual bodies; that is, bodies that are translated from physical space into virtual space. Over the summer, I was projecting that my research would become focused on queer relationships as explored within technologies, mythology, and online communities. Additionally, I was (am) extremely invested in explorations of cyborg bodies (bodies transformed by technology) and our relationships to virtuality. I began a series of experiments with a technology called Bevel3D: a small laser scanner that attaches to a mobile device to create 3D selfies. Because of the limitations of the scanner, scans are full of holes, disfigured, and are easily manipulated into unrecognizable or nonhuman shapes.

After a series of 3D software explorations and 3D prints, my research was beginning to become more invested in virtual representations and face-to-face communications mitigated by technologies. With a focus on virtual networks, my new proposed research began to take form as a series of faces that reflected my own social network in a matrix.

So here we are... deep into the realization of a giant sculpture. The project aims to manifest a kind of exploded social network that is intrinsically mine. The content includes interviews with my family, friends, associates, colleagues, roommates, and my partner over face-to-face video communications like FaceTime or Facebook.. While the captured videos of my social relationships are full of liveness and familiar gestures, they lack much of the depth and intimacy we experience in a face-to-face interaction. My aim in this project is to project that familiarity and liveness onto a physical presence, the 3D carving of my face, to give the virtual bodies physicality and depth in space. 

What will it look like (good question)? I plan to build a sculpture wall of CNC carved faces and project, with a projector, the living recordings of a sample group of my own social network. Returning to my old nemesis and closest confidante, the CNC, I am manifesting 45 tiles carved in my likeness as the wall where these virtual faces are projected. There is much more to be done of course, with each face requiring an incredible amount of time to carve, paint, and complete and the matrix where the tiles are housed constructed, painted, and suspended in situ. Additionally, I will be recording the interviews of a total of 45 (or more) relationships to complete the liveness wall. All in all, there is much to be done that I am completely, happily, and wholly consumed by for the next few months.

It is an exciting moment, to be sure. The dates of the exhibition are the 27th, 28th, and 29th of April at the University of California, Santa Cruz's Digital Art Research Center (website link and Facebook event to follow). Additional happenings surrounding the project and thesis exhibition will follow in updates, as I'm sure the excitement will only continue to grow as we move forward. I am so eager to finalize this project and realize my research!

Featured research tracks for  future thesis writings...

Hello, all! After an exciting evening, I am happy to update with progress on a recently developed project that continues my work from last fall: Techne.

I was recently asked by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History to participate in a one-night event titled Radical Fibers. The event combined multiple theme-led  activities that focused on remixing textiles. For my part, I asked participants to weave with me using small laser cut looms and tools. The small woven tapestries each hold a small colored LED. While the woven pieces themselves are only 4.5x4.5 inches, the completed circuit would combine 8 rows of 8 colored LEDs to create a giant tapestry/quilt woven with an imbedded reactive matrix. There were many collaborators of all ages during the free four hour event who contributed to the completion of five circuit squares.

As promised to the many curious and interested parties, I am making my loom model available for download here. This loom is modeled using 3D software Sketchup and arranged for the laser cutter in Adobe Illustrator. I've also updated this model after the fibers event to reflect collaborator suggestions. Of course, you may have to adjust the model for settings on your own laser cutter.

It was an incredible experience working with the community on this extensive project! While I have made no arrangements for any future collaborative experiences or display exhibition, I am excited to continue reaching out to collaborators to complete the total circuit quilt. Thank you to the many contributors who assisted in weaving, asked about the project, and offered insight or helpful suggestions! Additionally, many thanks to the MAH for hosting the event and contributing to the completion of the project! As always, I will continue to update on the future of the circuit quilt as the project develops.

Graduate school: halfway done! Many milestones have been reached in the last few months, including building a body of work that I plan to continue to refine, cementing my project group research and concepts, forming my thesis committee, and establishing a general research for the next year of work I will produce!

Although textiles and circuits are still an intuitive and fruitful aspect of my work, I am now more firmly invested in focusing my thesis work on the animals that produce these technologies: people. I have always been interested in why we do the things we do and feel the way we feel, especially in relationship with the sublime and the mythological. My work has traditionally held a religious subtext that is manifested through illustrations, so I began an introspective journey relating this context to my childhood and my long-running relationship with organized religion in direct opposition to my own sexuality. 

Following this direction, I began work on a narrative in multiple parts featuring the sexually intimate moments of Jesus Christ through biblical stories, titled Queer Mythos. Combined with my own personal narrative, this project began to shape into a comic-style booklet series that I will likely continue to illustrate throughout the Summer. In the larger focus of my thesis work, I now imagine Queer Mythos as a parcel of the final presentation. 

While my physical work may manifest as queer observations through a religious context, the research extended from this platform has been focused on these subjects through a technological lens. My abstract for this body of work (attached below) initiates an investigation of bodies living in the post-digital through concepts of spirituality, sexuality, and sensuality. This research extends into questions about avatars, virtual realities, and tele-relationships. Although this work is fresh from the womb (so to speak), my initial Summer research includes a thorough gathering of critical writings and projects that explore these concepts.

​Conclusively, I am back in the sexy saddle.

Click above to read my blog entry that initiated this research (meta).

It has been a whirlwind of excitement in the past few weeks! Starting my first quarter of graduate studies at the University of California in Santa Cruz has been an incredible adventure. Even as we are just getting started, Digital Art and New Media students must begin to form questions that will shape our work for the next two years. 

​As a result, I have become entranced with combining arts and crafts with my new media studies. The focus of my work so far has shifted into explorations of these themes, combining circuit building and loom weaving to create a dynamic, interactive tapestry. 

Using this concept as the core of my future explorations, I plan to play and create new designs that use these intersections as medium.

Still ever-working and exploring here in Hong Kong! After very successful repairs to our ROV with the help of City University, we ceremoniously untangled the ROV's 100ft long tether to prepare for its first emersion in both salty water and strong current. Soon after, we took an island-hopping ferry from Aberdeen Harbour to the Mo Tat village side of Lamma Island where we met with a fellow researcher from City University, Dr. Jhave Johnston. After conducting a couple water quality tests (Haley McQueen, Environmental Sciences) and capturing underwater footage with a Go Pro, we launched the ROV from the beach (accompanied by some interested dogs). The ROV responded well, but was overwhelmed by strong currents offshore and was retrieved from the water by Jennifer Rogerson (Marine Studies), who found that the tether had tangled in some debris. Professors Thomas Asmuth and Sara Gevurtz took turns piloting the ROV from an onshore laptop and OpenROV's IP address interface while I wrangled the tether from the beach. Even with the tangles, the ROV launch was a considerable success: with new information on piloting the ROV in heavy currents, we can begin to improve its design and functionality for the future.

​And now the ISEA 2016 Conference has officially begun. Last night, we attended its opening reception at Polytechnic University and had our first taste of the exciting week to come! On the schedule, we have nearly a thousand talks, panels, and in-progress presentations focused on interdisciplinary academic research and creativity with intermittent breaks for performances and open discussions with researchers and students from around the globe. Our own work-in-progress will be debuted here on Friday at 9:30 through a ten minute presentation given by Thomas and Sara. It's such a privilege to be here and to engage with mentors and peers in what will hopefully become a future career! I'll be updating again soon with more conference details and activities...