main conference abstracts & biographies - University of New South ...

est net artwork in 1998 and the Cine Golden Eagle for best scientific
documentary in 1986. Vesna's work has received notice in numerous publications
such as Art in America, National Geographic, the Los Angeles Times, Spiegel
(Germany), The Irish Times (Ireland), Tema Celeste (Italy), and Veredas (Brazil)
and appears in a number of book chapters on media arts. She holds a PhD from
the University of Wales and is the North American editor of AI & Society journal
and author of Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow
edited volume (Minnesota Press, 2007), and recently published Context Providers:
Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts, co-edited with Margot Lovejoy and
Christiane Paul (Intellect, 2011).
http://victoriavesna.com
PAULA DAWSON
Holographic Materiality
This talk will explore types of hypotheses, which can arise from viewing
holographic imagery. Holographic images exist through the diffraction of light
from various types of nanoscale structures which are optically or mechanically
formed. Optical formation of the hologram by the direct exposure of objects to
laser light results in a virtual image of extreme spatial verisimilitude. The
experimental nature and evolution of holographic imaging will be demonstrated
by highlighting three of my works. There’s No Place Like Home (1980) which
engages the viewer with the simultaneous existence and non-existence of a
familiar place, a lounge room, by moving between sides of the holographic
picture plane. Extending Baudrillard’s prediction “ you bend over the hologram
like God over his creation: only God has this power of passing through walls,
through people, and finding Himself immaterially in the beyond” viewers of Shrine
of the Sacred Heart 1997 at St Brigid’s church Coogee, could test the intangibility
of a flame like form by placing their hands into the space of the virtual image.
Luminous Presence 2007 made from thousands of holographic pixels, each a
single frame of a computer graphic environment of translucent raster scanned
figures illuminated by rays of light, animates light and darkness. By evidencing
the ontology of holographic characters in film, this work takes its place as
material evidence, a ‘real’ hologram.
BIOGRAPHY
Paula Dawson is Associate Professor at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. Her art
works simulate and/or evoke complex states of being. Dawson has held
residencies at the Laboratoire de Physique et Optique Besancon, France, RMIT
applied Physics Dpt. Melbourne Australia, the Holocentre, New York and the
Centre for Advanced Visual Studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge Mass. Her first major holographic work, There’s No Place Like Home,
1980 is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
http://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/Dawson/index.htm and her best know installation
To Absent Friends, a bar room in which holograms replace all reflective surfaces,
was awarded the Grand Prix of the First High Tec Art Biennale in Nagoya, Japan
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