004

Authors:

 Allen, Kate.

Title:

 The relation between real and virtual sculpture

Keywords:

 faith, hypochondria, depthlessness, messy, representation,

Abstract:

 A huge sculpture is forming from my hypochondria.....It is growing as I
write this and I can't stop it......my mother told me always to beware of
losing needles as they my travel through the veins and eventually pierce
the heart.

I found a place on the surface of a mirror where the 'real' and the
'virtual' could coexist. The screen as mirror transforming the site/sight
of discarded calories emerging as computer models. Recycling
paranoia/body obsession into something fantastic.

The computer has added to my sculptural practice the visualisation of
'depthlessness'. I once built a vessel shaped object, which suggested
something should reside in it. I just could not visualise what that
object should be. So following the actions of a magician I decided to
build a curtain around it and wait for the object to appear. I really
believed that it would. It is like the faith you need to believe in a
god, it may become tangible if only you can believe in it enough?

The computer enables/encourages acts of faith/imagination/spirit to
'exist' "migrate from the body to a world of total representation.
Information and images float through the Platonic mind without a
grounding in bodily experience"(Heim 1991).
I am exploring the space between 'the actual and the virtual' where the
body is not lost, but could be reduced to a set of vital statistics. The
space is messy and computer code and sculptural language mediate my sense
of self, flesh, image, and reflection may be confused.
Plato thought that any representation of reality must be understood as
fake or a copy, that art can never transcend artifice. But the computer
allows for the creation of simulations and as technology improves
simulations seep into our reality. There is the possibility; to create a
reality that is built direct from the imagination, not a copy of reality
that already exists, but an inverted reality, where the representation is
the original. This is a space where artists will increasingly find
themselves drawn in the next millennium.
This is work in progress
Kate Allen. d9576869@wlv.ac.uk I am a sculptor PhD research student at Wolverhampton University since 1996.Lecturer in sculpture at Chelsea College of Art & Design since 1993. My last show was an installation 'Exorcising the Flesh' at Walsall Museum and Art Gallery 17th September-31 October 1998
I was commissioned in January 1998 to build an object/virtual installation for Jubilee Arts in the West Midlands I have shown work at numerous venues in this country and abroad. I did my BA at Exeter College of Art 1982-85 I have an MA in Sculpture from Chelsea College of Art and Design 1987 I was a Rome Scholar in 1989 I participated in the 1st Conference Reframed Conference in 1997.