Transmutations:
Valerie Walker and Mark Nelson
Design Gallery,
School of Human Ecology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1300 Linden Drive, Madison WI
Artist’s Talk:
Friday, October 20, 4:30-5:30pm
Reception:
Friday, October 20, 4-7pm
Valerie Walker and Mark Nelson are concerned with the transmutation of textiles, architecture, and interiors into complex and fascinating virtual spaces. Walker creates poetic, interactive animations from photographs of traditional fabrics, while Nelson’s “guerrilla makeovers” are virtual installations that overlay startlingly human characteristics onto well-known modernist buildings.
Both artists are actively exploring the line between reality and virtuality, and the limits and potentialities of digital experience.
Currently based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Walker describes herself as “a digitally rooted fiber artist with an active transmedia practice—a thread-bender, a virtual reality spinner.” Trained in electrical engineering, computer science, and traditional Japanese dying techniques like shibori-zomé and katazomé, Walker strives to express and question “the relationships we have with each other, our world, and our daily technological interfaces.” She is committed to using environmentally sustainable natural dyes and to the slow, repetitive processes of traditional hand-dying. Her digital works create richly interactive labyrinths that imply the tactile nature of fabric, yet deny actual touch. According to Walker, an important aspect of this work is her “personal take on how far our techno-desires are from current techno-reality.”
Nelson, an associate professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Environment, Textiles, and Design, teaches computer visualization as a practical skill for his interior design students. His own “Building Body Work” uses many of the same techniques to a far more provocative end. As Nelson explains: “My guerilla makeovers operate with the premise that modern architecture has failed to connect with the human body. Customizing these buildings by adding integrated color, human body parts, piercings, jewelry, and fiber-optic ‘hair’emphasizes their underlying inhumanity while offering a way to construct an alternative persona for each building.” Nelson’s elaborate virtual installations focus on body modifications like piercings and jewelry that allow humans to transcend their limitations, suggesting that these iconic public spaces can transcend their modernist origins as well. His work also brings up the thorny question of appropriation. Can the image of a building be radically altered without permission?
Naturally, work by both of these artists can be accessed online. Valerie Walker’s "Circadian Textures", a web-based QTVR interactive labyrinth mixing shibori-zomé and natural dyes with digital reproduction techniques, is touchable online at: www.oboro.net/webproj/VdW. Mark Nelson’s guerrilla makeover for the Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art can be viewed at: https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/mnelson2/web/GuerillaMakeover052506_files/ frame.htm
A closing reception and artists’ talks will be held in conjunction with the “Trans” conference organized by the UW’s Visual Culture Cluster from October 19 through 22. All events will be free and open to the public.
Directions to SoHE Design Gallery From Pyle:
Turn left out the doors of the Pyle Center for a block on Lake Street
Cross Park Street and go up the hill to the left of the Red Science Building.
At the top of the hill, go down the other side on the left of Bascom Hall
Continue straight on Linden Drive
The School of Human Ecology is the second building on your right at 1300 Linden.
Visit www.designgallery.wisc.edu for further information and driving/parking directions, or
contact Jody Clowes 608.262.8815
Valerie Walker, “CorpsRose,” 2006.
File Last Updated:
December 1, 2006
Feedback, questions or accessibility issues: visualculture@education.wisc.edu
Copyright 2006
Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin-Madison