[ISEA95] Artist Statement: Catherine Richards — Curiosity Cabinet at the End of the Millenium

Artist Statement

In this electronic installation, the attempt to reconstruct self-determination in new media environments focuses on the meeting of body and machine: a cyborg state of half metal and half flesh. The spectator/participant climbs inside the cabinet, a ‘safe’ house, an impermeable skin from the electronic and magnetic sea. The doors are also made of copper screening and the spectator will be seen, on display, from the outside through the doors. The cabinet of copper conducts the upper RF spectrum. In effect, it collects the electrical spectrum and conducts it into the earth. The effect of the copper mesh is the visible keeping the invisible at bay. The box is grounded by connecting it with a thick braided copper wire to the neutral on a power outlet. The energy then has a pathway back to earth.

  • Catherine Richards (Canada) is a visual artist working in the domain of new technologies and the simulation of self. Her works have received awards as well as being exhibited internationally. She has written on the subject of new technologies, art and the body, and co-directed the Bioapparatus residency ’91 at the Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada).