GOSSIPING WITH THE GODS

Collaboration with Dagmar Atladóttir
Banff Centre (2017)

In this collaboration, artist Dagmar Atladóttir created a device called a God Nail, which served as both a writing utensil and an antenna, and was fitted to my index finger. With the God Nail, I opened a session of automatic writing within a circle of candles. 

The God Nail is made out of clay, a material which combines elements of water and earth and is then transformed through the fire of the kiln.

In this alchemical process, the nails become tools for connection and listening. The project involved an automatic writing performance, text, ceramics, and a cocktail party where myriad ceramic vessels created by Dagmar were activated by participants drinking out of them.

AUTOMATIC MUSE

Ongoing methodology (2017–)

This is an ongoing methodology, where research questions are written on one side of the paper, the papers are then flipped over, and the questions are answered on the other side of the paper, randomly, in a process of channeling. Here, divination and mediumship, often used only for intimate questions, and/or considered fraudulent or mercenary, are used to speak on questions of philosophy and critical thought.

MYSTIC INSIGHTS, LTD.

Collaboration with Rebecca LaMarre
Words & [ ] — A Durational Conference of Art & Thought, Darling Foundry, Montreal (2016) + Darling Foundry Ad Astra Artists’ Constellation (2016)

This collaboration involved fortune-telling using artificial neural networks that have been saturated with mystical texts and poetry.

Mystic Insights, Ltd. also plays with the concept of “hot readings,” where publicly available data from the querent’s social media and online presence is woven into the tarot reading.

Thanks to Cody Walker for programming the neural networks and to Lorna Bauer, whose installation can be seen in the photo below. 

THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY IS A LONELY TASK

Sensitive Observers, Agora, Berlin (2015)

In this workshop, participants were invited to work with the form of the circle as visible boundary and sacred geometry. The materials were pebbles, chalk, and public space. Participants spent time in their own, and others’, circles.

SLEEPWRITER

Centre for Integrative Genomics, sleep laboratories of Dr. Paul Franken and Dr. Mehdi Tafti, Lausanne Switzerland, Swiss Artists-in-Labs (2010–14)

What happens when words, which are always awake, are interfaced over the signals of the sleeping brain?

The long poem Assembling the Morrow was composed using electroencephalogram (EEG) data, recorded at the Centre d’investigation et de recherche sur le sommeil, during a nine-month residency at a sleep laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland. 

A text editor called SleepWriter, designed in collaboration with programmer Manolis Pahlke, vectorizes the raw EEG data so it can be turned into words. The video excerpt (bottom page) is just over 2 minutes from 24 minutes, and shows stage 2 sleep, which is light, non-dreaming sleep (N2). Soundscape in collaboration with Karl Heinz Jeron.

Photos of sleep lab by Lee Wei Swee