This thesis examines two final works produced for my candidacy in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the Ohio State University. The first piece discussed was part of the Inter performance, presented by the Dance and Technology Lab class during the spring quarter 2000. The second piece, Release was a sculpture and performance work for my thesis show at the end of Spring Quarter 2000. This thesis describes both works and renders an analysis and interpretation of the individual works. It also endeavors to provide a correlation between the two pieces and discuss their importance as integral parts of the body of work produced over the course of two years of study.
Both these pieces served to readdress concepts my work has engaged for a number of years, while investigating and experimenting with media and techniques to redirect the means by which an audience perceives the discourse I have attempted to invoke.
My contribution to the Inter event was a performance exploring physicality and the limits of bodily experience. I tied these notions directly to the vicarious nature of social experience with the aim of indirectly referencing the western cultural relationship to the environment. Contained within, there was also a subtext of reincarnation/cyclical evolution.
The final work, Release, was a significant undertaking in terms of physical construction and marked a shift towards engaging female perspectives through conceptual concerns, as well as figurative aspects. Through this work I attempted again to critique the purported values of masculinity yet this time directing the focus towards the explication of my own actions as a representative of my gender.
The two pieces that form the focus of this paper, Inter and Release represent a significant part of this redirection and accumulation of experience. And while by no means a definitive reflection of these processes, they represent my own distillation and transfer of this development. Through the description, analysis and interpretation of both works I hope to elaborate on the points I have raised so far and provide a more detailed explanation of my theory and practice.