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PROFESSOR
UW-Madison Department of Art: 1985-
AREA: Non-Static Forms and Visual Culture
1983 MFA       Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
1981 MA        University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
1976 BA        Hampshire College, Amherst, MA
The Everyday Life of Objects explores the persistence of material culture
in the electronic age. Visitors to the gallery navigate an interactive vir-
tual maze full of ordinary objects. (It can also be accessed on line.)
Many of the objects have touch sensors that activate audio files about
our relationships to a particular object (though not the one illustrated)
or
to objects in a more general sense. Spectators will also have an oppor-
tunity to contribute their own audio reflections on objecthood, which
will later be integrated into the project. This virtual installation is mod-
eled after the 1500 square foot maze installed in the Madison
Enterprise Center in 1997. While the physical maze (documented in
the previous faculty exhibition) included thousands of actual objects, the
icons in the cyber installation have only a virtual life. They are artifacts
of the extensive use made of the Internet for the exchange of objects
through their images in the forms of catalogues sales, auctions, barter,
and self-representation. The digital project (developed in Maya soft-
ware and then translated into VRML code for viewing with Cortona)
was constructed by Adelle Roberts with Thomas Bleigh, Joseph
Connelly, Amanda Downer, Andy Gardner, Joseph Kerkman, Cedar
Marie, and Michael Velliquette.