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Moving to Las Vegas meant exploring a whole new environment. I brought my Caller characters to the Las Vegas Strip and unleashed them on the casinos and resorts. Las Vegas is built for having fun and is absurd and real all at the same time, so perfect for my work. The Simcity era of the 1990s is probably my favourite source of inspiration but the new resorts also offer incredible opportunities and continue to play with what is real and what is not. The Callers burst up through the made landscape to shout and compel us to enjoy life while we can and there is nowhere better than Vegas for them to thrive.
Urburain is the world around us, it is a world formed of layers from the core of the earth, to beyond the sky. The layers detail a real and fantastic world inhabited by the callers.
The callers appear in the Urburain world and bring us messages. The callers and their messages are joyous and playful but also ask us to expand the way we think, they are calling to us; saying look, take note, be aware! They ask us to think in a more connected way, they highlight the interconnected nature of our environment, structures both human-made and natural, and our place on this incredible planet.
The callers are talking to us and asking us to appreciate and love the world with all its complications, possibilities, and endless opportunities.
These drawings describe a journey and realization I went through due to a serious medical diagnosis. It is simply about living life to the full, and the joy the of just being alive. The drawings display an encrypted password (left) and readable story text (right) of the 10-chapter story. Each drawing has a standalone statement or comment on life as well as being part of the set of ten chapters.
The original drawings are made using pencils, paint, and burnt milk. Milk is brushed on, or poured onto the paper, and then baked in an oven to create rich brown tones that are fixed and don’t deteriorate. I am re-visiting a method we used, as children, to write secret messages to each other. It was a way of creating a space that only us children understood, it was an adult-free world built in our imaginations of hidden treasure maps, and secret letters.
‘A Story in 10 Chapters’ has gone through an encryption process. This method can be used to determine ownership of a unique artifact, and is similar to the creation/sell/buy method used on Blockchains (NFTs). Each chapter is encrypted using an RSA cypher called RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding. The encrypted text can only be unencrypted using public, and private keys. The two keys are given to different parties, and only when they come together will they reveal the story text. The encrypted output is also password-protected using a hashing mechanism called a Bcrypt hash. The password (hash) is much shorter than the encrypted output and is easier to manage.
It all started when I wanted some of my wonderful friends closer to me. I was diagnosed with cancer in 2021 and I had a bit of a battle ahead. I wanted to see my friends and family’s faces and feel their presence, I needed their friendship in a visible way, as well as physically and emotionally. In some cases, those people were more than 5000 miles away and the only option was a drawing or a photograph. I decided I would draw portraits; a drawing is so much more personal than a photograph and it really helped me, it meant so much. I loved drawing portraits and so I just carried on doing them. The portraits also form the basis of my Best Friends project.
I have also always admired artists who work in portraiture. It’s great to draw a portrait and include elements that reflect the sitter’s character and heritage. While I love drawing unreal things, I also like to be able to draw realistically.
You can commission a portrait of you, a friend, or relative. The portraits are 7.5” X 11.5” (19cm X 29cm) or 11" X 14" (28cm X 35.5cm) drawn in pencil with a detailed background that in some way reflects the sitter and their life or connection to another person.
The friends’ portraits are part of an ongoing project about friendship, ownership, and the importance of understanding data protection. You need to understand technology as it increasingly impacts all our lives. Our data is bought and sold under our noses and impacts what we see, what we are offered, credit limits, and many more things.
Each portrait is hand-drawn on heavy-weight watercolour paper, the individual portrait drawing is 7.5”x11.5” (19cmx29cm). Each sitter is given their own digital version of their portrait. The individual portraits are grouped in blocks of 14 and made into huge banners and large digital prints.
Each sitter will be issued joint ownership of the larger banner pieces that use their image, they will be part of a profit-sharing scheme that enables them to have part ownership of large scale original artwork and profit from it when it sells.
Ownership and sales are recorded using a similar form of cryptography that Blockchain uses to record transactions, this means that each owner and sale is recorded in an immutable form.
By involving people in this process I hope to lift the lid on some of the more complex forms of data collection and increase the number of people who own large scale artworks, after all, everyone can be a collector of art.
I am combining my portraiture work with my ‘A Story in 10 Chapters’ work which tells a story in open readable and encrypted text. This work is made possible by a grant awarded by Nevada State Arts Council. I am working on 10 new drawings that merge portraiture with encrypted story telling. I am using the same encryption technique using an RSA cypher called RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding. The encrypted text is embedded in the drawing and tells a story about the picture. The combining of these two bodies of work will allow me to experiment with my realistic and symbolistic drawing techniques.
The other underlying theme of this work is also to highlight the importance and versatility of the pencil when expressing ideas and thoughts. The pencil enables the user to write, doodle or draw without the fear of making a mistake. A pencil mark can be replaced, redrawn, or removed completely.
The work will be displayed in a new Virtual Reality gallery and will be accessed using a QR Code placed at a ‘partnership’ IRL gallery. Working in both a real-world gallery and VR also provides access to a different group of people who would not normally want to, or physically cannot, visit a gallery.
Constant change, fluid standards, and an ever evolving legislative environment are leading us down many different, and in some cases, conflicting paths. Join the Augmented Society Network to lift the lid on some of this century’s most important societal and technological challenges.
This network explores ideas, activity, and research, in an attempt to understand and influence the ways in which society is augmented now and into the future. We, as individuals and as connected networks, can and should have a greater impact on Society’s relationship with the technologies and systems we use - or are destined to use. Meant as an inclusive, considered and open forum to connect, explore and offer solutions, the network’s monthly virtual sessions have focused on subjects ranging from artificial intelligence to climate change, education, creativity, supply chains, values, and much more while leading to collaborative publications, policy guidance, global events and product development.
We welcome all members of society and are eager to make room at the table for provocative and enlightening discussions around what truly matters in our augmented world.
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