Media/Performance Art

Media, performance and installation based art by kylerobertrose ask questions without expecting answers; exploring post-modern cultural tensions and the impact of technoculture on perceptions of identity.

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“Sick Culture” [Video/Performance Art]

March 20, 2013

“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” –Krishnamurti

What constitutes good mental health in North American culture? Is it our ability to participate in the economy as a consumer? If so, what does it mean to consciously participate as a consumer in this culture? How does one navigate the intersecting points of oppression implicated by our consumption? What is the true cost of rejecting that system and what is the true cost of buying a sick culture?

(Stills from video)
Filmed by a:mythfish

“Audio Mirror” [Art Installation]

So much hinges on commodity-centred consumption based understanding of our world; disembodied simulacrum of our desires. A tension is born. Reflections in water and echoes. Questioning what it means to see something that is outside the body, but of the self is at the heart of this piece.

A microphone sits in front of a white screen. As you walk up to the microphone, your shadow is cast onto the backdrop. The microphone has “talk to me” written on it. You speak into the microphone. What you hear reflected back from the screen and your shadow is a deep canyon of reverb returning your voice but reversed. You speak again and it throws your voice back at you again. And again.

The viewer encounters an altered version of their output. The manipulation of the sound as it returns seeks to draw attention to the ways in which technology mediates our output, returning a manipulated simulacrum of our identities. Do you recognize your reflection?

(Photographs from installation of “Audio Mirror” at Western University, London, ON. April 18, 2013)

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