Re-Inventions

These works trace paths of invention, exploring innovation and the "global commons." Tracing the citations in patent applications enables me to unearth some of the patterns of technological innovation and how they intersect with economics and evolution. Most inventions are re-inventions; they spin from developments in prior innovations. What is it like to inhabit our inventions? The “Ruby Red Falls” works were named after a Space Shuttle payload project that artist Joe Davis proposed to NASA during the 1980s. As viewed through Davis’s own words, the laser was his attempt to reconcile “the antagonistic sensibilities of the cultural and technical worlds.” My works typically portray unintended consequences of technology and include (re-) drafted plans of some of the patented inventions that cause them (e.g., steam engines leading to cumulative carbon dioxide emissions). Some of the patents propose remedies resulting from yet other (patented) technologies that caused the need for protection (e.g., shields from nuclear radiation).

Other works imagine what living in space might actually be like in terms of intimacy. Initially during covid, I felt like I was living on an asteroid.  At times the view of earth from space suggests patterns of migration and instability. Many of the animations explore the detrimental effects of unbridled capitalism, asking "who owns space?" While the images form portraits of technological innovation, the associated AR (augmented reality) portrays what is unseen in patent applications, namely personal reflection and political and environmental questioning (see the works about extraction) that contrast with the factual market-oriented data.

Many of these works have been or will be exhibited in the US (in the Getty-sponsored PST exhibition "No Prior Knowledge" at the Central Library Getty Gallery opening in September, 2024; in CYFEST12 and 13 in Saint Petersberg and Moscow (including the Hermitage); in several commercial and university galleries in NYC  (including Ronald Feldman Fine Arts); at the Boulder Museum of Art in a show curated by Lucy Lippard; and  in Vienna (at the WUK).  The  curator of the latter, Saskia Vermeylen, is attempting to revise the Space Law Treaty to enable marginalized countries access to space. 

To view a clip from the AR component of "Self-Portrait as an Astronaut," click here. Use your browser "back" button, to return to this screen.

Click on thumbnails for larger images

	Ruby Red Falls 1	Ruby Red Falls 2	Installation Getty PST / No Prior Art Los Angeles Central Library	Installation Conversation at a Nuclear Plant 2 National Arts Club, NYC	Installation Marina Gisich Gallelry St. Petersburg, Russia	Detail ExtrActivism WUK, Vienna, Austria

	Gimme Shelter 1: Migrations	Gimme Shelter 2: Migrations	Orientor 1	Orientor 2	Messenger	Messenger 1

	Speak to Me 1	Speak to Me 2	Untitled (NASA)	Crying Astronaut	Transmission	VAB

	Post-Earth Engineering	Workforce in Space	Cadmium and Cobalt 2	Extraction

	Safe in Space	Cry in Space: Docking	Mining_ A Brief History	Conversations at a Nuclear Plant

	Colonization of Space	Portrait as an Astronaut	Habitat	2020 Vision	Workforce