KELLY DOBSON TALK

This is the second time that I have had the pleasure of attending Kelly Dobson’s lecture and each time I find her work more and more fascinating. Although I am still thinking about the intervention in mimesis that one might argue much of her work attempts to do particular in relation to the ways in which technology is posed as other, I am particularly interested in a question I posed during the question and answer section. Specifically, I asked what the role of the conceptual or the necessary presence of such in her work as a digital media artist. While I found her answer thoughtful, I think that it might have been a more interesting question if posed differently. What becomes more fascinating is the role of utility of digital media. Put differently, in what ways I wonder does the digital media artist fundamentally faced with some kind of groundedness in utility? In comparison to other modes of art production, particularly painting or mixed media, the appropriation and reconceptualization, which becomes so provocative in her work is precisely because of the spectator’s relation with the technology’s original function. The obvious example is Blendie, where the assumptions concerning how tool’s are used are altered in ways that subvert human/machine interaction. In her project where the pod helps control breathing and relaxes the user, the utility or original function becomes much more interesting because of its ambiguity. The question, when posed as such, makes me wonder what the role of the utilitarian is in her work, especially since her imaginative and playful appropriations and re-designs play on our common assumptions and logics of technology’s utilitarianism. 

Monica Garcia