Strategic Failure: an artist’s talk by risa
The Topological Media Lab, Mobile Digital Commons Network and Interstices present:
Strategic Failure
an artist’s talk by Nola Farman
Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005 @ 7:30
@ Topological Media Lab [TML] : EV.11-435 : 1515 St. Catherine W. :
Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Complex
The idea of strategic failure pinpoints the instability of communication. For example, I have made a piece called The Braille Book. It consists of a polyester resin open book showing two pages of Braille text. Scattered between the Braille are photosensitive cells. When the reader feels the surface it triggers sounds that come from speakers hung on different spots on the ceiling. Some from behind and some in front. The sounds allude to possible readings of the text but are in fact ambiguous enough to be misleading. The full meaning is only available to Braille readers. Access is denied to the sighted reader so that in a sense the artwork fails for them. It reverses the usual privilege given to sight. One can begin from there to consider the reasons for the artwork’s failure as such.
I have another work in which the technology (ultra-sonics ) has been chosen for its instability in relation to the subject – the heart. In this piece the failure of the technology from time to time points out the instability of the communication between people in rather unexpected ways. Unexpected things can happen when some of the elements in a situation are not in complete control or do not meet the expectations of a conventional mind set in the viewer of an artwork. When unexpected things happen an everyday experience can be transformed momentarily. The mundane produces a flash of surprise. This element of surprise its something that is impossible in the spectacular or the sensational – because the sensational is expected to be what it is.
NOLA FARMAN
Nola Farman has been commissioned to produce large public artworks such
as The Tidal Indicator on the Brisbane River, The Wind Tree for
Griffith University’s Logan Campus; the Resonating Pool for the East
Perth Redevelopment Authority; The Braille Book for Scitech Discovery
Centre; The Subterranean Listening Device for the Mundaring Sculpture
Park; The Fireline for Civic Square in Canberra. She has produced
numerous installations that use sensors and logic control systems. Her
imprimatur, the Garden Path Press has produced numerous artists’ books.
Nola Farman has received a number of awards including an Australia
Council Two Year Fellowship (1997) & two Premier’s Awards, namely the
Western Australian Civic Design Award (1995)& the Predominantly
Landscape & Environment Award (1995) in association with Forbes &
Fitzhardinge Woodland, Architects & Urban Planners. In the same year
she received the Mundaring Arts Centre Inaugural Prize for
Self-portraiture. The East Perth Redevelopment of the Claisebrook
Greenway received the L.I.N. Award of Excellence with Tract Landscape
Architects. In 1991 she was awarded a Diploma of Honor at the Prix Ars
Electronica, in Linz, Austria (for The Lift Project
Her works are in the collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale in
Paris; the Baltic Centre, UK; the Royal Society, London; Pays-Paysage,
France; the National Gallery and Canterbury Gallery, NZ; the National
Art Gallery, Canada; the Art Gallery of Western Australia and Artbank
and a number of private collections
Reviews and profiles have appeared in international publications
such as Leonardo, Art in America, Studio International, Der Prix Ars
Electronica: International Compendium of Computer Arts, Music Today
(Tokyo) & Sound Arts (Kobe). In Australia her work has appeared in
newspapers and art magazines including Art & Australia and The
Australian Art Review.
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