Date of Submission

Spring 2020

Academic Program

Studio Arts

Project Advisor 1

Juilanne Swartz

Project Advisor 2

Juilanne Swartz

Abstract/Artist's Statement

What is a word fraction?

A word fraction uses the key structural format of a number fraction but words and sets of words take the place of numbers. There are the numerator and denominator spaces, being filled by words, and the classic dividing line in the middle.

The cool thing about a word fraction is that you can put any words inside of this format because it is not a format intended for words, it is normally reserved for numbers. When you make something up you call the shots and that freedom is a good thing! These fractions are a way to distill information, cutting out the frivolous and leaving the essentials, and beyond that deciding something about their relationship to each other. I am interested in ways of pushing for multiplicities within projects, points of connection and departure. My work also tries to deal with complicating the line part of the fraction. What does the line mean, is it really a line? The idea is to create work that represents the whole, and the factions that make it up, all at once.

The word fractions are also based on 1:1 relationship between words/sets of words. Giving the words a relationship to each other that is purposeful, and structural.I also like to think of the inverse of each fraction, what does being the word on top do to the perception of the whole? How can you see both sides, all sides?

Originally my project was going to involve different ways of interacting with work within a space: For example projection onto sculpture, large scale projections, headset sculptures to wear and hear audio, work for viewers to take with them. It was very much about one’s experience inside a world I constructed.

Once social gatherings became unsafe, my energy shifted to making work that could exist within the viewer’s own life instead of my constructed environment. My viewer has become my collaborator and I give them more responsibility in the creation and existence of the work. With the exchange of responsibility, “viewer” no longer feels like the right word, because the audience has taken on the roles of receiver, participant, and co-creator, a multitude of new positions. Their roles require more action. The Artwork’s world meets the Viewer’s world 1:1. There is room for the unexpected because there are levels of removal between us: physical distance, time, space, our personal lives... Yet maybe those levels of removal can become tools, and we can create intimacy through working together, 1:1. The project spreads independently, and comes together, continuously...

you analog me everything digital nothing internal external

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