R a c h e l c l a R k eA w A k e n i n g s

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R a c h e l c l a R k e

awakenings

University art GalleryDepartment of art

college of the artscalifornia State University, Stanislaus

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500 copies printed

Rachel clarke - awakenings

University art GalleryDepartment of artcollege of the artscalifornia State University, Stanislaus

October 18 - December 17, 2010

This exhibition and catalog have been funded by:associated Students Instructionally Related activities, california State University, Stanislaus

copyright © 2010 california State University, Stanislausall Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

University art Gallerycollege of the artscalifornia State University, StanislausOne University circleTurlock, ca 95382

catalog Design: kristina Stamper, college of the arts, california State University, Stanislauscatalog Printing: claremont Print and copy, claremont, cacatalog Photography: Sam Parsons

ISBN:

cover Image: Still from Flow, 2010, 3D digital animation with sound.

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contents

Director’s Foreword .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 4

essay.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 5

Images.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9

list of Works .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 28

curriculum Vitae .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 30

acknowledgments .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 32

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Director’s Foreword

This exhibition, Rachel clarke, awakenings: In her many projects, Rachel clarke has combined the

medias of drawing, video and new media installations. clarke’s work uses themes of both nature and

culture and looks at intersections of identity and technology. constantly at the forefront of technology

and it’s relentless advances, clarke has constantly pushed the envelope of art. I am very pleased to

be able to exhibit her work for others to enjoy.

Many colleagues have been instrumental in presenting this exhibition. I would like to thank Rachel

clarke for the privilege of exhibiting her amazing work, Mike azevedo and Stephen Blumberg for their

outstanding collaborations with Rachel clarke, Sam Parsons for his insightful photography of Rachel

clarke’s work, elaine O’Brien for her wonderful essay, college of the arts, california State University,

Stanislaus for the wonderful catalog design and claremont Print and copy for their expertise in

printing this catalog.

Great thanks is extended to the Instructionally Related activates Program of california State University,

Stanislaus and anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue. Their support is

greatly appreciated.

Dean De cocker, Director

University art Gallery

california State University, Stanislaus

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“I have come to realize that digital technologies, so much less tangible and more mutable than

technologies past, are a perfect metaphor for the times we live in….” Rachel clarke

“In dreams begins responsibility.” William Butler Yeats

With this exhibition, Awakening, Rachel clarke invites you to enter the spaces of her mind – her

sense of life today – a heightened poetic, political consciousness edged with the hopeful, absurdist

fatalism of an artist-master and eternal apprentice of the postmodern sublime. as you experience

Awakening, do not imagine that you have crossed a threshold from life to art. The artist will suspend

you between them, and between other opposing states of awareness – the subjective and objective,

the past and the present, the dream and awakedness – states not of action or conviction but of

uneasy provisionality. Bring with you into Awakening’s virtual, material and sound environments your

memories of the kinds of places Borges, William Gibson, and other poets of real unreality have taken

you; recall thoughts you had there that could have been thought by men and women of any age, and

other thoughts that could only be of your own time. For clarke’s new animation, video, and sound

installation, Flow, bring as well remembered news images of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster (pictures

you will not have forgotten) that have flooded the media and collective consciousness since april 20,

2010. Remember watching.

clarke is a poet of the digital sublime; her art has always played at the borders of the virtual and

the real. (about the Somnium [latin for “the dream”] works, for example, she asks with a smile,

“The retelling of the dream – can you really get it right?”) But clarke is also a political thinker who

feels a responsibility to speak about the all-too-real issues of our time that concern her deeply.

Flow, conceivably the final stage of “Awakening,” comes out of the artist’s sense of urgency about

environmental destruction heightened by the frustration she felt watching the BP oil disaster as

media spectacle, the emotional disconnect of electrical connectivity, the inescapable complicity of

us all, the sheer enormity of it. a social role of artists has always been to articulate what is to others

inexpressible; new forms are created for the ever new of contemporary experience. “I just had to

make this work,” clarke explains. She has no answers to the world’s problems that trouble her, is

“unable to make a didactic work,” but she has in hand media of artistic expression that emerged with

the computer age and are, we imagine, best able to humanize the astounding creative-destructive

forces of global communication, postmodernity, and capitalism; and, as in Flow, the capacity to

make those forces comprehensible to individual subjective consciousness. collaborations with audio

designer Mike azevedo on the Somnium dream works and with composer Stephen Blumberg on Flow

intensify the sense of embodied mood in clarke’s separate but related theaters of mind.

On Rachel clarke’s Awakening

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The Mcluhan concept, “the medium is the message,”central to our understanding of media and the

information age, is also key to understanding the work of this artist. It is the inherent capacity of new

media to represent contemporary experience, “characterized,” in clarke’s view, “by incredible richness

of experience, yet by e sound and time. I love the ephemeral quality of it…. I always use drawing,

but other than that, coming to new media wa continuous state of instability and change,” that drew

her to them in the mid-nineties after earning her BFa in traditional media at Winchester School of art

in the Uk and before she began her MFa in electronic art at Southern Illinois University, carbondale,

in 1998 (completed in 2001). “I started out in painting and drawing and reached a threshold.” She

began to include found objects, then light. When computer technology came in, she says, “I couldn’t

believe it. I was able to move ideas so much further, includas the only way I could do layerings of

time and transformations.” Since her full-time appointment at Sacramento State in 2001, “in this

media everything has completely changed.” clarke likes the fact that it is always changing, that

each work requires learning and inventing the very means for its making. “It’s not like traditional

practice…. It’s arduous in a different way. I try to make [the artwork] happen by using new means, by

trial and error, always pushing new.”

What other artistic media than those clarke deploys can be right for the subjects of an artist whose

very titles – Somnium [Dream], Flow, and Awakening – are derived from verbs, nouns suggesting

hybrid states of transformation and becoming rather than static being? clarke has imagined and

created interstitial spaces for Awakening where virtual and material realities merge. They take us

out of ourselves and draw us back in, possibly changed. In Flow you might experience and perhaps

share the artist’s own sense of being immersed in the flows of life and the postmodern sublime where

“good” and “evil” mingle and change places. You might share something of her desire (however self-

ironic and questioning) to awaken from the spell of media consciousness, the Plato’s-cave syndrome,

where life outside – including the worst suffering of others and the wreckage of nature – is experienced

as mere screen entertainment.

In the end there remains the old avant-garde question Awakening inspires, at least in this viewer, as to

whether or not any art, and especially art so given to and good at questioning reality, can be where

responsibility toward others in the real world begins.

elaine O’Brien Ph.D.

Professor of Modern & contemporary art

Sacramento State University

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I M a G e S

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“The Present Moment” exhibition at the center for contemporary art Sacramento, 2006.

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“Somnium” in “home and away”, an exhibition at JayJay Gallery, Sacramento, 2008.

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“Somnium Redux” installation at Block Gallery, Sacramento, 2008.

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“Between” installation at University of the Pacific, Stockton, 2009.

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“The Present Moment” new media interactive artwork, detail.

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“Time Piece” 12-channel video installation, Rachel clarke.

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“Time Piece” 12-channel video installation, Rachel clarke.

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“Time Piece” 12-channel video installation, detail, Rachel clarke.

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“Somnium” new media interactive artwork. Rachel clarke with audio design by Mike azevedo.

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Still from “Somnium” new media interactive artwork. Rachel clarke with audio design by Mike azevedo.

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“Somnium (i)” new media interactive artwork. Rachel clarke with audio design by Mike azevedo.

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“Somnium (i)” new media interactive artwork, detail. Rachel clarke with audio design by Mike azevedo.

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“Somnium (iii)” new media interactive artwork (left) and “Somnium (ii)” sonic/projected artwork (right).Rachel clarke with audio design by Mike azevedo (“Somnium (ii)”.)

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“Somnium” (ii) sonic/projected artwork. Rachel clarke with audio design by Mike azevedo.

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“Somnium (iii)” new media interactive artwork, Rachel clarke.

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“Book of Days” new media interactive artwork, Rachel clarke.

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Image from “Book of Days” new media interactive artwork, Rachel clarke.

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Image from “Book of Days” new media interactive artwork, Rachel clarke.

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Still from “Flow”, digital animation, 2010. Music composed by Stephen Blumberg

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Still from “Flow”, digital animation, 2010. Music composed by Stephen Blumberg

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Rachel e.claRke rclarke@csus.edu www.rachelclarke.net EDUCATION 1998 – 2001 Southern Illinois University, carbondale, Il (MFa) 1989 – 1992 Winchester School of art, Winchester, Uk (BFa) PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS 2001 – present california State University, Sacramento, Department of art: associate Professor, electronic art SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / PERFORMANCES / SCREENINGS SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS Upcoming: california State University, Stanislaus, art Gallery, Turlock, ca, Oct 2010 Upcoming: Crocker Mosaic, New Media community public artwork commissioned by the crocker art Museum, Sacramento, ca, Sept, 2010 Between, Reynolds Gallery, University of the Pacific, Stockton, ca, Nov 2009 Somnium Redux, Block Gallery, Sacramento, ca, Oct 2008, http://www.blockdowntown.com/exhibit_clarke.html The Present Moment, center for contemporary art, Sacramento, ca, Sept-Oct 2006, http://www.ccasac.org/ccaSPastexhibitions.htm A World Away, auburn University art Gallery, auburn, al, Jan 2006 Bio Electric Dot, University Union Gallery, cSU, Sacramento, ca, Sept 2002 GROUP, JURIED & INVITATIONAL EXHIBITIONS A Changing Surface: Prints in the Age of Digital Media: center for contemporary art, Sacramento, July 2010 Premiering Print Portfolios: Morgan conservatory, cleveland, Oh, Jun – Jul 2010 We’re on Huron: 233 W.huron Street, chicago, Il, Feb 2010 Control_Shift_Option: contemporary Drawing, Space 301, Mobile, al, Mar-May 2009, http://www.space301.com/exhibitions_past.php Southern Graphics council conference exhibition, chicago, Il, 2009 Feeel, american River college, Sacramento, ca, Dec 2008 http://www.sifting.org/Works_by_Jiayi_Young/Feeel.html Home and Away: Contemporary Video Art, JayJay Gallery, Sacramento ca, Jul 2008 http://www.jayjayart.com/ CSUS Art Department Faculty Show, University library Gallery, cSU, Sacramento, ca, March 2008 The Present Moment 2, art ark New Media Installation, crocker art Museum, Sacramento, ca, aug 2007 – present The Gold Kitchen, art ark New Media Installation, crocker art Museum, Sacramento, ca, aug 2004 – Jun 2007 Gift Shop, One Year in la Gallery, los angeles, ca, Nov – Dec 2006 Dig It II: A Survey of Recent Digital Art, Gregory kondos Gallery, Sacramento city college, Sacramento, ca, Nov 2006 Drawing Conclusions, Biggin Gallery, auburn University, auburn, al, May 2006 – aug 2006 Endless Forms, Engaging Evolution, Work Gallery, University of Michigan, ann arbor, MI, Mar 2006 Light in the Dark, Space Gallery Portland, Maine, Jan – Feb 2005 The Gold Kitchen, installation, Most Significant Bytes, Mount Union college, alliance, Ohio Nov 18 2004, http://music.muc.edu/msb/ Cut Outs, Ready Mades, Color Fact, JayJay Gallery, Sacramento, Jul 2004 IDEAS Exhibition, iDMaa conference (International Digital Media and arts association) Orlando, Fl, Mar 2004 CSUS Art Department Faculty Show, University library Gallery, cSU, Sacramento, ca, Dec 2003 Marks - an Exhibition of Contemporary Drawing, Target Gallery, alexandria, Va, Nov 2003 Postflesh, University library Gallery, cSU, Sacramento, ca, Dec 2002 DPI, california Polytechnic University, Pomona, ca, Nov 2002 Self, Davis art center, University of california, Davis, ca, May 2002 SCREENINGS & PERFORMANCES Avatar, video screening at INPORT – International Video-Performance art festival, Tallinn estonia, Dec 2005 Avatar, video screening at VaD Video and Digital arts Festival, Girona, Spain, Nov 2005 Skirr Performances live performance at california State University, chico, ca, 2nd alfred loefler New Music Symposium, Feb 10 2006 live performance (opening concert) at Festival of New Music, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Feb 3 2005live performance, empyrean ensemble, at Mondavi center, Davis, ca, Nov 2003 live performance, empyrean ensemble, at cSU Sacramento, Festival of New american Music, Nov 2003 Skirr Screenings Screening, Remote lounge, Bowery, NYc, 23 Jul 2005 Screening at Light in the Dark, Space Gallery Portland, Maine, Feb 10 2005 Screening at SAND 2004, Swansea Institute, Swansea, Wales, Uk, 27 Nov 2004 Screening at Euphoria, The Brick house Gallery, Sacramento, Jun 2004 Screening at SFaI International Film / Video Festival (Jurors’ citation), San Francisco art Institute, ca, February 2004

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CURATORIAL Home and Away: Contemporary Video Art, JayJay Gallery, Sacramento, ca, http://www.jayjayart.com/, Jul 2008 Light and Presence, center for contemporary art, Sacramento, ca, March 2008 Postflesh, University library Gallery, cSU Sacramento, ca, Dec 2002 – March 2003 COMMISSIONS & AWARDS Sacramento arts and Business council of Sacramento’s Artist of the Year award, 2008 New Faze Development, Sacramento: public artwork selected for Marysville Blvd, Sacramento (not yet realized due to New Faze budget issues), 2007 The Present Moment 2, commissioned by the crocker art Museum for the Art Ark, 2007 The Gold Kitchen commissioned by the crocker art Museum for the Art Ark, 2004 Jurors’ citation for Skirr, SFaI International Film / Video Festival, San Francisco art Institute, ca, February 2004 Skirr commissioned by empyrean ensemble, 2003 Joint Women’s Studies and University Women’s Professional advancement Juried competition, for a grant proposal, Artist’s Book, Digital Book and CD-Rom, Southern Illinois University, Illinois, USa, Dec 2000 artwork published in Hurricane Alice, cultural journal spring edition 2000 Joint Women’s Studies and University Women’s Professional advancement Juried competition, for a grant proposal, The Gendered Body, Digital Prints and Publishing, Southern Illinois University, Illinois, USa, Feb 1999 PUBLIC COLLECTIONS University of california San Diego library, 2006 crocker art Museum, 2010 PUBLICATIONS & REVIEWS artwork featured in Art Ltd “Sacramento Rising”, David M. Roth, Sept/Oct 2008 Review in the Sacramento Bee, “Moving Pictures: the Video art exhibit at JayJay offers a Rare Gallery experience”, Victoria Dalkey, July 25, 2008 Feature in Sacramento Magazine, “40 Under 40”, cathy casinos-carr, Jan 2008 Review in the Sacramento Bee, “Now and Zen”, Victoria Dalkey, Oct 6, 2006 Review in The Auburn Plainsman “Digital art ‘a world away’ from conventional art on the Plains”, ashley hungerford, Jan 19 2006 Review in Rhizome, “let’s call it art: caa Recognizes the New Media caucus”, Juliet Davis, Mar 5, 2005 Abstracts 2005, caa atlanta “Screenshots and audio effects: electronic events”, caa, 2005 Review in The Portland Phoenix “We are Moths”, Maggie knowles, Jan 21, 2005 Feature in Sacramento Bee, “art To Go”, Patricia Beach Smith, aug 22, 2004 Feature in Sacramento Bee, “Inspiration abounds for New Music Festival”, Patricia Beach Smith, Nov 2 2003 Feature in Sacramento News and Review, “Whim vs. Rigor”, Jackson Griffith Volume 15, Issue 32, Nov 6 2003 Review in Artweek, “Postflesh”, David M. Roth, april 2003 Volume 33 Issue 3, april 2003 Review in Sacramento Bee, “Merging with Machines”, Victoria Dalkey, Feb 23 2003 Feature in Iride magazine, “Postflesh”, Giancarlo Pagliasso, Feb 2003 Interview on Livewire TV show, access TV Sacramento, Jan 2003 LECTURES, RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS & PANELS Panel co-chair with claudia hart for “Under Fire: 3D animation Pedagogy and Industry complicity in New-Media education” (panelists: Jennifer Steinkamp, Bruce Wands, Michael Rees, Joshua Mosley, Greg little and Shane Mecklenberger), college art association annual conference, chicago, Il, Feb 2010 University of the Pacific, Stockton, ca, artist lecture, Nov 30, 2009 University of california, Davis, ca, artist lecture to Graduate Seminar, May 27, 2008 center for contemporary art, Sacramento, ca, artist lecture, Sept 7 2006 University of San Diego, IcaM (interdisciplinary computing in the arts) “current Practice” lecture Series, Jun 1 2006 Northeastern University, Boston, Ma: “creative alchemy: Recent collaborations”, Feb 23 2006 art Department, auburn University, auburn, al: artist lecture, Jan 10, 2006 Jule collins Smith Museum of Fine art, auburn University, auburn, al: “Internet art and censorship”, Jan 12, 2006 lecture presentation for cSUS art alumni chapter, “Past, Present, Future”, Jun 6 2005 co-chair of New Media caucus Panel “Screenshots and audio effects: electronic events”, College arts association conference, atlanta, Feb 2005 lecture presentation, “Skirr”, Uc Berkeley composition colloquia, april 30 2004 Panelist, “constructing Boundaries: approaches to the Discourse of New Media aesthetics” New Media caucus Panel, college arts as-sociation conference, Seattle, Feb 21 2004 PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS editor in chief, media-N (international online journal of the college arts association New Media caucus) ISSN: 1942-017X, Feb 2005-present http://newmediacaucus.org/journal/ Vice President, caa New Media caucus, Feb 2005-present Member of the executive committee, New Media caucus Reviewer for leonardo Journal, March 2008-present

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aRTIST STaTeMeNT

I was born the same month and year that the first Internet message was sent, yet I was barely aware

of digital technologies when I was young – computers in school consisted of writing code that made

a fluorescent green word loop infinitely, flickering on a single-color monitor. I became an art major

and studied drawing and painting. Then in the mid 1990s I first saw a complex, pixilated image being

manipulated on a multicolor cRT screen, and it was a revelation to discover that in less than a decade

consumer-grade digital technology had advanced from that monochrome scroll of words into enabling

visually/computationally complex tasks involving millions of multicolored pixels. I was attracted by the

image quality and the radiant glowing color, but something more was happening, something clicked inside

of me about what digital technology could mean as an art form.

I began by learning imaging software so I could make my first digital artworks, and it did what I wanted it

to do. Gradually I understood more clearly what it was that I was going after: it was the almost alchemical

and shape-shifting properties of the digital medium and the possibilities for fluid and infinite transformation.

Manifested as images, words or sounds, digitized information could be manipulated in time, space and

motion in ways that had not been affordable, available or even possible before. The artistic potential was limitless.

There arrived a point where I “became” a new media artist, where I knew that this medium allowed me to

express fluidly concepts I couldn’t fully realize with any other medium. My aesthetic language also grew to

embrace the new possibilities afforded to me by different softwares and hardwares that became available

as the digital revolution gained momentum. as I grew in knowledge and understanding I expanded my

exploration, making digital videos and animations as well as interactive and participatory works, such as

installations that required a visitor’s presence or input to come alive. Dynamic and responsive behaviors

possible through interactive digital processes meant permeating the literal barriers between artist and

viewer, opening the way to previously impossible collaborative, participatory and immersive experiences.

eventually, the utopianism that colored my early experiences of technology grew into to a richer, more

complex understanding of new-media art practice and the social/cultural context that made it possible.

Increasingly multi-layered relationships with digital technologies were developing in all aspects of society

through the late years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st – within an incredibly short space

of time digital technologies literally transformed society, to the extent that they are now embedded into

every aspect of life and are inseparable from our behavior and experiences on personal, social, cultural

and global levels. The connectedness of networked culture, the stress of unceasing change, the adaptations

that technologies demand; the new ways of seeing, experiencing and understanding the world, are mirrored

and explored in my art practice.

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Over the years I have created a specific personal relationship with the medium, and have developed a

hybrid artistic and technical language accumulated though the knowledge of software and hardware that

has been learned, adopted, abandoned, purchased, sold, updated, outmoded. The digital artist does

not work in a stable environment of known tools and predictable long-term outcomes, the landscape

is unstable and prone to seismic shifts, sometimes gradual and sometimes sudden. The technological

innovations that have enabled my practice have been developed to meet other needs, such as military and

corporate imperatives, and have simply trickled down and been adapted, subverted or misused to create art.

I have come to realize that digital technologies, so much less tangible and more mutable than technologies

past, are a perfect metaphor for the times we live in – times characterized by incredible richness of

experience, yet by a continuous state of instability and change, and an increasing sense of uncertainty. The

fragility of our lives is highlighted by looming economic and environmental crises and ongoing war – our

global problems seem huge, complex and insoluble. My work is about examining the experience of a life

imbued with technology, and through the digital medium I strive to find form and meaning that express my

sense of time and place – a mix of the personal, local and global – as I uncover the ephemeral beauty and

instability of life itself.

Rachel clarke, July 2010

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ackNOWleDGeMeNTS

california State University, Stanislaus

Dr. hamid Shirvani, President Dr. James Strong, Provost/Vice President of academic affairs

Mr. Daryl Joseph Moore frsa, Founding Dean, college of the arts

Ms. Susana Gajic-Bruyea, Vice President for University advancement

Department of art

Dr. Roxanne Robbin, chair, Professor

Dean De cocker, associate Professor

Jessica Gomula, associate Professor

David Olivant, Professor

Gordon Senior, Professor

Richard Savini, Professor

Dr. hope Werness, Professor emeritus

christian hali, Instructional Support Technician II

Jon kithcart, equipment Technician II

University art Gallery

Dean De cocker, Director

Special thanks to Ramon S. Nacion for assistance in the installation of the exhibition.