Thesis Abstract & Current Research

7/6/2017

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.