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No full textAnthropologyThe Image of Research 2009FinalistThe deregulation of global capital has led to the gentrification of portions of the Canadian countryside adjacent to large cities, creating new opportunities for capital investment by transforming working class spaces into residential and commercial zones. In this context, the countryside has been recast from a place of work to a place of leisure. In the Almaguin Highlands in Ontario, where I conduct my research, one of the many results of this shift has been the Highway 11 development project. The project involves the four-laning of the highway as well as the bypassing of various communities. The bypassing has been detrimental to local businesses, leading many to close their doors. The highway development project increases the speed at which urban residents can arrive to the area for recreation; however, it also increases the speed at which local residents can arrive to larger metropolitan shopping centers for groceries and other necessities. This has further increased the challenges faced by local businesses. This image, of a deserted gas station, represents the challenges local businesses are facing. I took this photo while conducting fieldwork in the Almaguin Highlands in June-July 2009
Model for Daedelus
No full textStudio ArtThe Image of Research 2009SubmissionMy present work has been gravitating around the concept of navigation and liminal moments I have come to think of as futile heroics. These moments are attractive because through them I can address issues of nostalgia and historicity. How are heroes constructed and remembered? How is myth forgotten? What are visual signifiers of the apparatus of memory? Finn’s legendary salmon of knowledge, the Dark Rift, rocket man conquistadors, Samuel Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and the story of Icarus have played into my thinking of the mobile hero, that of the named and that of the anonymous. (In New York City a Hero is also a sandwich.)
My studio art practice is centered upon material inquiry and Model For Daedelus is both visual documentation of my work and the work itself, documenting a sculptural performance. Through form I articulate something of my inner chronicle, stochastically and methodologically laboring towards meaning making. This storytelling necessitates content-making, an infusion akin to John Locke writing of a blind man exclaiming that he knew what scarlet signified, indeed scarlet was very much like the sound of a trumpet! I believe that synaesthesia crosses more boundaries than just the senses and my investigations delve into how material might become lucid and fluid, shifting from itself into a sham riot of the heroic
Panacea: Reagents, Potions, Elixirs, and Cure-alls
No full textStudio ArtThe Image of Research 2009SubmissionMy research deals with the fusing the ideas, working methods, epistemic rules, and visual symbology of science, mysticism, and pop-culture into art works. In this series, I looked to the histories of alchemy and paint/pigment. The materials of painting, sometimes seductive, disgusting, perplexing, or ecstatic, were isolated and amplified by bottling as “potions”. The spectrum of glassware reaches from antique apothecary bottles to modern Pyrex laboratory equipment. The bottles are titled with terms such as “Potion”, “Elixir”, “Antidote”, “Panacea”, and “Reagent”. Their form and this language calls up various associations to fantasy, fairy tales, alchemy, patent medicines, intoxicants, and chemistry. This hybrid range, from the magical to the scientific, of methods of knowledge-generation and of ways to seek, experience, and uncover “hidden” knowledge is at the core of my research
Signal Processing #2
No full textPhysical Therapy and Movement SciencesThe Image of Research 2008FinalistOur laboratory is interested in the mechanisms underlying recovery of locomotion following human spinal cord injury (SCI). We have shown that subjects with motor incomplete SCI (sparing of some volitional motor control) exhibit significant increases in their maximal force generation capacity within a fatiguing protocol. This is in stark contrast to the decrease in maximal force consistently displayed by healthy control subjects during the same protocol.
This photograph shows equipment used to collect and analyze electromyographic and force data. It was taken after the first trial of a new protocol, the results of which indicate that the volitional component of a maximal contraction is necessary for extra force to develop. These results corroborate with the theory that descending neuromodulators from the midbrain have the ability to augment force output. Pictured in the foreground are active surface electrodes (DE 2.1, Delsys, Boston, MA) suspended over an isokinetic dynameter (not shown). The background is filled with an assortment of amplifiers, filters and analogue/digital converters
Tanzanian woman teaching me to sew in the market
No full textAnthropologyThe Image of Research 2009SubmissionThis image was taken in Arusha, Tanzania during a research project focusing on reproductive health in Tanzania in the summer of 2008. The woman pictured is making tote bags using colorful local fabrics called kangas. Her business is a result of a loan from a microfinance project in the region. She is showing me the skills she learned by teaching me to make my own tote bag. I love this picture because the vivid colors convey the hustle and bustle of the women of the sokoni or marketplace
explorations in dissonance #11— cognitive dissonance
No full textGraphic DesignThe Image of Research 2009SubmissionThis image is #11 in a series of 15 compositions that explore the use of dissonance in graphic design. My research and explorations of dissonance (in general) led me to the more specific theme of cognitive dissonance. I constructed hand-made letters for a poster announcing the performance of a dissonant piece of orchestral music (Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring). The letter-forms signify the textual information, and (at the same time) the letterforms, substrate, and media used are signifiers for events/meanings not associated with the performance of the music indicated.
I seek to produce cognitive dissonance in the viewer’s mind as they attempt to maintain a consistency of their own beliefs and attitudes while being faced with the associations these posters present
The One More Traveled
No full textArchitectureThe Image of Research 2008FinalistMy studio design project has been process-driven from the ground up by first creating shape, volume, and experience, and then using circulation and pathways to translate these into a legible building. The A+A building is in many ways a similar abstract space, traversed by pathways attempting to connect point to point in interesting, unconventional, but useful ways. A study of these pathways and their usage (or lack thereof) reveals the success or failure of the realization of these connections, and I found this revealed most profoundly and simply through a photographic study of the paths taken through the building as illustrated by the footprints of hundreds of salt-encrusted student feet on a snowy day
Timber “Thief”, Macaya Biosphere Reserve, Gran Plenn, Haiti, 2008
No full textAnthropologyThe Image of Research 2009FinalistTimber cutters have worked the high reaches of Haiti’s culturally and biologically rich, Massif de la Hotte for many generations. The creation of an unfunded national park in the area some 20 years ago has done little to alter long-standing patterns of extraction and environmentality, although the project’s criminalization of certain livelihood practices has produced new frictions in mountain communities and altered the shape of the region’s political ecology. My work in Haiti seeks to untangle this dynamic political ecology. Timber harvesting in southwestern Haiti is carried out by small teams of cutters, who, often equipped with only hand-forged tools, can take a month or more to reduce a tree to boards. The rough-sawn boards are then carried one-at-a-time more than 20 km to collection sites at lower elevations where they are loaded onto trucks for shipment to lumber markets in Port au Prince and other urban centers. Although frequently targets of blame and derision, such non-intensive forms of extraction actually contribute little to Haiti’s ecological crisis, which has long historical, political and socio-economic roots, stretching far beyond the borders of Haiti itself
Save the Past for Our Future
No full textAnthropologyThe Image of Research 2009Honorable MentionThis image is a visual testament to the widespread looting that occurs throughout much of the developing world. In countries such as Peru, individuals are finding that raping their own heritage for ancient pots and textiles is more profitable than any work they can find in their own country. The systematic looting of archaeological contexts is an epidemic.
This 1,000-year-old skull is part of a burial from the site of Porvenir, Peru. Looters, or hauqueros, inhabit known archaeological sites in makeshift tents for several days or even weeks to dig up burials looking for “showy” pieces that would fetch a decent price on the art market—primarily the auction houses of the U.S. and Europe. Whatever is left, including well-preserved skeletal remains such as those pictured, are often left on the surface to rot. Not only are these looters destroying any opportunity to learn about Peruvian prehistory from these human remains, but they are also desecrating their own ancestors
Owl
No full textStudio ArtThe Image of Research 2009FinalistI was raised in a rural middle class family, and my work reflects middle class mentalities. I use utilitarian and populist materials and subjects in a way that transforms them from the normal and everyday into the magical, mystical, sincere and poetic. Such a humble transformation shows the ephemeral nature of the content.
My work needs to be humble and ephemeral because that is what makes it human scale: it is imperfect. The faults lie in the construction and materials; thereby the pieces will fall apart and the colors will fade. Everything has a life span: pop culture, objects, art, human life and the universe. I embrace and celebrate this part of life. The subjects I choose are taken from my life and interests to define myself and my art as part of the human condition. I chose the owl because I see him as an elusive and mysterious predator/protector. Owl is not a rendering of an actual owl, but a simulacrum of the mental and magical space that is this epic creature