Crowe explores individualism, culture

Senior Colleen Crowe displayed her senior art exhibit, entitled “Techn-archy,” in Blackbridge Hall last week.

“The exhibit explores the ideas that we are slowly losing our individualism and identity through corporate mass culture and technological developments,” Crowe said.

The exhibit was an instillation piece, meaning that it combined many different aspects or pieces that worked together to form one piece.

“I thought it was a really brave piece,” Richard Lou, chairman of the Department of Art, said. “It dealt with relevant issues in our lives today.”

The first work featured in the exhibit is entitled 33110., which is focused on the anatomy of the musculature within the face.

“I used wiring to represent the fibers and the various colors to specify certain muscles in order to create an easier view of the deviating musculature on its artificial chassis,” Crowe said. “The multitudinous sperm characterize nothing more than capsules, only created to send micro-chips of information about what ‘used to be’ and what we shall become.”

The second instillation work, composed of clay and found material, is referred to as Untitled. This genderless being displays the makeup of a machine.

“This simple idea in machinery encompasses the idea of our loss in individuality and sexual category,” Crowe said. “It is the organic mind challenged by the artificial mind.”

Crowe’s work was influenced by Scientific Research Laboratories – Mark Pauline, J.G Ballard, and Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto.”

“The work investigates the theories that we are tortured by reactionary thought and have become a culture of conservatism and non-individualism,” Crowe said. “This is combined with perverse technology in a world of knowledge juxtaposed with unawareness.”

The exhibition overall examined the ideas of social structuring and the organic mind versus the artificial mind.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 22 2005. Filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry