[TISEA 1992] Artist Statement: Jill Scott — Paradise Tossed

Artist Statement 

Screening 14’6″

Paradise Tossed (1992) is a dreamy computer animated survey of technological terrain, idealism and design from four young women’s points of view. It uses Macro-mind Director’s lingo to access sections of a twelve minute 3D animation on a Sony laser-disc player. The menus arc laid out like pages from a photo album and by touching the screen the participant can not only choose segments to be played on another screen but can also construct timeless associations. Margaret Mead once said:
Utopia is built on the great diversity of human propensity and gift and it must be in terms of modem information theory, redundant enough to catch the developed imagination of each different member of society.
This insight into the redundancy of the human condition was inspirational as a beginning point for research that led me to a series of archetypical assumptions. Carrying on from Machinedreams, my last interactive work continued to research and compare eras (1900s, 1930s, 1960s and 1990s), conscious that although they exist a generation apart, together they encapsulate the tremendous extent of environmental and domestic change we have witnessed since the beginning of this century. It occurred to me that interactivity could provide people with archetypical scenarios that they would be curious to visit, and in doing so may question the reason for their choices and why so many people’s ideals were similar. [source: tandfonline.com]

“In Jill Scott’s new work Paradise Tossed the ironic artifice of digital electronic imagining as a televisual and allegorical intertextual rendering of meditative landscapes of domestic technology cannot be avoided. The directness of this piece is transformed into a surreal investigation of female identity.” _Variant, no date

https://www.jillscott.org/artworks/archived/paradise-tossed-1993

  • Dr. Jillian Scott was born in Melbourne Australia in 1952. 1974: Lecturer in Video. Cockpit Theatre, London. 1978-79: Acoustic instrument building and multi-track recording. 1975-78: Student assistent: San Francisco State University. Practical experience: Bay Area Video Coallition. 1982-85: Research: digital sound effects. First MacIntosh Computers-Mac Paint and Macwrite at the Alexander Mackey School of Art, International Slow-scan experiments, Fairlight Computer Music and Video Instruments, Band- The Dynabytes. 1979-82: Research: Analog Effects. Grass Valley Vision Switcher. Video editing at the Community editing facilities in Australia and in San Francisco. 1985-87: Research: Astronomy and Physics.Video paintbox- Harry, Digital Compositing and basics in 3D Computer Animation, – Australian Video Festival, Australian Film and Television School and the Video Paint Brush Company. 1989: Research: Interactive computer-laserdisc technologies and human cognition. In New York worked as Commercial Painbox-Harry editor at Edital USA. 1990: First computer-based interactive work – MACHINEDREAMS, Sydney Biennale Worked with Simon Veetch, an innovative security camera detector called The 3 DIS System, PC based Dos, security cameras. 1990-91: Started a Computer Animation Company called Lumagraph-Sydney. (Lumina, and an animation program called Cystal from Time Arts using Targa Graphic Cards).