Latent Contagion
2004
Latent Contagion spawned from self-speculation and general curiousity as to why certain memories in specific people seem to generate more meaning than in others. I was reading Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash at the time. The book had some interesting references to creativity and religion as being “viruses” passed along generationally. I wanted to step back from conditional learning and create something representative of the primordial condition of the mind before the effects of experience.
Animation and “viral” imagery is projected onto an MRI of my father’s spine, referencing the instinctual and/or generational memory projected onto him/me. Perhaps something passed along through genetics leads us to develop certain processes for dealing with our imminent experiences? The connections that we have with others and processes inherent in our genes serve to formulate our individuality more than any conscious personal decision we make about our appearance, speech or reaction to outward stimuli.
Latent Contagion was part of my thesis work.
The installation was comprosed of two MRI’s sandwiched between plexi-glass, installed in a drywall cube. Flash MX was used to create the randomly generated video feed for projection. The videos are a combination of sculpture, claymation, stop motion animation, and a series of animations created by drawing on 16mm film.