Jessica Loseby: Views from the ground floor …

 
  • ©,

Artist(s):


Title:


    Views from the ground floor ...

Exhibition:


Creation Year:


    2004

Medium:


    Flash 6 plug-in, Soundcard and speakers, Internet Explorer 5+, Broadband or ISDN connection recommended

Category:


Artist Statement:


    Jess Loseby is an established net and digital artist from the UK. Her primary medium is the internet. She exhibits in national and interna­ tional projects both online and offline. Her work ranges from small and intimate online installations to large-scale digital projections and video. Loseby’s unashamedly low-tech net installations and video build comparisons of the network and digitality into their frustrations, attention to triviality, and repetition as absurdly compatible to the female domestic routine. Themes dealing with individuality and cyber identity reoccur frequently, as do the faces of her children, who seem to be bound up irrevocably with her digital self. Jess Loseby is young(ish), has three children, one husband, and no time!

    “Views from the ground floor …” views [view, see, perceive] point of vie physical height, opinion, point of view, [opportunity for] to see, as seen from a particular place, distinctiveness of vision, under observation f m a place or [standjpoint [in view] to consider or judge or foreseen [g und} lower, floor level, domestic or single-story [story] trivial lower base.

    Views from the ground floor … is a networked installation, a view of a pixilated domestic landscape that can seem in one scene utopian and in another transformed into a constricted area full of suppressed fears and desires. Loseby draws unexpected and compelling com­ parisons between female domesticity and cyber culture; where low and high technology live side-by-side in an uneasy partnership of repetition, interaction, and consequences. Her positioning as a wheelchair user means these visions are always viewed from the ground floor …

Technical Information:


    Flash 6 plug-in
    Soundcard and speakers
    Internet Explorer 5+
    Broadband or ISDN connection recommended

    The digital technology involved in the making of Views from the ground floor … is compatible with Loseby’s ideas of hi-tee/lo-tee synergy. The work was created using a home PC, DV cam, and a range of “off-the-shelf” software and (domestic) tech. However, its utilization of the internet as the primary medium creates a linear/ non-linear and unique narrative, which is arguably only possible on the net. Aspects of the net are deliberately employed in the produc­ tion of the piece, from page-loading hierarchies to using “bugs” in both Internet Explorer and Flash to visually affect the work. Multiple Flash movies are repeatedly embedded into the HTML pages (dis­ rupting the corporate rectangle) and video. Gifs and texts are layered over and above static icons in a style perhaps closer to mixed media or montage than the web.

    Clive Loseby, a composer more known for his work in film and television, wrote the music for the piece. Polished, studio-based music created in a high-technology environment was then deliber­ ately mixed (collaboratively), using manual and lo-tee techniques and DV-cam-recorded domestic sounds and samples, to create a fragile and wishful audio narrative that supports the visuals.

Sponsors:


    Views from the ground floor … was made with the generous
    support of the Daniel Langlois Foundation.