Portfolio

Data Collection, (2010)
Produced for the Sorting Daemons: Art, Surveillance Regimes and Social Control exhibition at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario. The project involves photographing the various identification cards (driver’s licenses, student cards, gym memberships, bank cards, credit cards, etc) carried by over 100 individuals. The images are presented on a 1:1 scale such that all personal information contained on the cards is legible to gallery visitors, but participants are allowed to remove any cards that they are uncomfortable with having on display in such a manner (removed cards are simply replaced with a black "withheld" placeholder card). Beyond being a simple (and very reductive) portrait of the individual, the project draws attention to the power and risks associated with these cards (and ideally the databases behind the cards) and challenges the typical notion of privacy - to keep things secret and hidden away - and instead presents an idea of privacy that allows the individual to retain control over what data is collected, how it is used and who is given access.

Special thanks to Andrew Clement, Joseph Ferenbok and Karen Smith at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information.

Artist Statement

Road, 2007
A single-channel video installation depicting a motorcyclist's journey through various regions of Toronto's urban geography as captured by forward-facing and rear-facing cameras. Both streams of footage (points of view) are rotated and presented in unison as a new assemblage where both images share a common threshold onto the surface the road. The result is a sort of Gestalt reification where the previously invisible relationship is made manifest through implication of the combination of separate viewpoints and new formal structures emerge.

Essay by David Liss from the 2007 MVS Graduating Exhibition Catalogue (page 22)

Image Matter, 2006
A collaboration with Dr. Kevin Robbie (a physicist at Queen's University) which makes use of a scanning electron microscope to image the edge-view (thickness) of a variety of photographic media and present them on a very large scale (16 inches by 7.5 feet and in some cases 16 inches x 15 feet) thus emphasizing the physicality of the photographs and removing all traces of the actual image content (except through the use of captions). The goal of the project was to investigate notions of value pertaining to photographic images and questioning were value lies by separating the photographic image ( that which can be reproduced or exist in a digital form without physical substance) from the photographic object (paper or physical substrate) and ideally expanding the dialogue to other forms of digital property (mp3s, movies and information in general) that have no physical substance.

The content of the Image Matter online exhibition is made freely available for non-commercial use through the application of a Creative Commons NonComercial Attribution 2.5 License.

Artist Statement
Image Matter online exhibition
Reevaluating Value: New forms of value resulting from advances in digital technologies - specifically as related to photographic images - essay on Image Matter

Traffic Islands, 2005
Photographs of the small parcels of land occurring between on-ramps at major highway junctions. Although driven past by thousands of commuters daily, these sections of land are rarely visited or even noticed. When photographed at night under the high-powered lights that loom overhead these constructed "natural" environments become transformed into strange liminal landscapes.

Artist Statement

Signs, 2004
A series of photographs depicting banal, ironic and humorous situations that act as subtle indicators of the state of North American culture (a continuation of the Out of the Ordinary, 2001 series).

Taken (a camera obscura van project), 2003, 2007, 2008
A van was converted into a mobile camera obscura in order to replicate aspects of a retinal inversion experiment performed by George Stratton in 1896 which questions how true and immutable one's perception of the world actually is. In the experiment Stratton wore a special pair of glasses that inverted his visual field for a period of three days. At first the glasses were very disorienting, but after time he was able to fully adjust to the upside down image of the world - in fact, he adjusted so well that when he finally removed the glasses he found that "normal" vision had now become unfamiliar and disorienting. For Taken participants were taken for 15 to 20 minutes journey in the van were the were totally immersed in the inverted camera obscura environment. Although not as long as Stratton's original experiment, the journey was sufficient to create a transition from a very disorienting (possibly even carsickness inducing) experience to a stage were they would start to recognize landmarks and figure out where they were in the city.

Artist Statement

Reconstructed Bodies, 2002
Multiple-pinhole photographic process developed to replicate aspects of medical imaging technologies such as MRI and CAT scan in order to investigate how these new technologies alter the way we come to view and understand the human body.

Artist Statement

Out of the Ordinary, 2001
A series of photographs depicting banal, ironic and humorous situations that act as subtle indicators of the state of North American culture.

Vague Expressions, 2000
A look at the ambiguity of the facial expression as used in photography and photojournalism to express the truth of a situation. And an investigation into how a bit of extra information (often provided in the form of a caption) can alter or project meaning onto an image. Images were produced by photographing scrambled pornographic television transmissions and adding false colour.