Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Hybrid production / making.

Hybrid production / making.
(Cyborg craftsman)
(Digitized humanity)

Possible effects that a digital material consciousness (the use of non-tangible bits to produce things) is having on a physically based material consciousness (the use of tangible atoms to make objects.)

Aesthetics as predicated by Gestalt theory and/or natural law is bent, if not eradicated.

The relationship between form and space blurred / homogenized.
The notions which define images apart from objects and visa versa further blurred.
A 360 degree awareness of objects is gained, thus eradicating sides, top or bottom, etc. (Objects made with out the considerations of gravity as a limiting factor / constant.)

Indeterminate time. Atemporal considerations bias of entropy.
Infinite space.
Identity crisis. We share nothing in our genetic make up with digital material. No atomic / psychological connection. In time, possible race and gender equality.
A lack of presence, no record of human interaction / involvement / manipulation. No tangible history.
The conceptualization of everything including and not limited to self.
A redefinition of function extending beyond utility and more towards the physical act of making / creation, sustaining previous notions of human problem solving. Work of the hand becoming that much more important / radical.
No rules. The possibilities are endlessly possible. Every confidence attained without need for hesitation or self doubt. No barriers / no limits.
Non-material consciousness leads to heightened transcendental / spiritual / awareness.
Transition from phonetic based languages to code, text, and/or possible telepathic languages / communication systems.
Redefinition or expansion of terms material, form, space, mass, place, human etc.
Simulation of telekinetic experiences, happenings, possibilities, and interactions.
Notions of travel, transportation, and shipping change.
Amorphous, non-structured societies, cultures, classes, and psychologies.
Environments and architectural structures become more moments than places, shelters. Notion of public spaces and / or places become radically changed.

As a digitally formated conscious is not tangible, the issues considered with it are also non-objectify-able, thus rendering these issues as conceptual and theoretical. In a sort of way, all things become harbored to the realm of imagination, mere notions if anything. It is possibly wrong to think in extremes, projecting a completely new future over a previously established way of life. Instead, consider a hybrid of these two consciousness. Ponder the possibilities of having a conscious articulated from both the materially physical as well as the digitally virtual. What are the losses, gains, and further more, what composites of both consciouses would simply expand our notions of self, being, life, and the worlds we inhabit?

Jason Lee Starin
11.29.2011

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Artist Statement August 2011


Clay as a physical substance persists in sustaining our material consciousness, even within the context of a clean, user-friendly, and technologically based digital age.  I find this dichotomous circumstance very intriguing.  The amorphous possibilities of clay continue to be influenced by the ambiguous context which we call virtual reality.  Outdated, yet analogous to the infinite possibilities of digital form, the plastic quality of clay serves as a relatable and familiar construct for affirming an adaptive hybrid psychology between physical and virtual realities.  I am interested in how digital material will continue to influence our notion of physical form in reciprocal and possibly reactionary manners. My work continues to explore these influences and possibilities in form and concept, reconsidering the notion of function within the hand-made discipline of ceramics. 

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

From Clay to Code


I am confused why we are not discussing what I consider a most pressing issue.  (Forgive me if I am being redundant.)  That issue being, that the very nature of things is changing right before our eyes and continues to do so exponentially.  Things, physical things, are increasingly changing from tangible objects to non-objects, furthermore, they are existing in a context that has fairly new and unprecedented conditions.  Non-the-less, these non-objects are serving the needs of people, of which are information, entertainment, and communication albeit in very different ways from which we are conditioned to.  I am, of course, talking about the digital world, or virtual reality - by extension, that which we call the Internet.  An intangible reality which we created and exist in that is not conditioned to how we have come to know and sustain ourselves by, meaning, physically, through a material consciousness - with psychologically structured knowledge based on the notion of resistance to material.  The very nature of things, a concept that has a foundation in natural material knowledge, said another way, traditional craft materials and practices, has no connection what-so-ever to the virtual world because that reality, if it is indeed so, is not physically based.  As a non-material, non-form, non-space, non-time, non-anything we can actually sense with a haptic experience based reality, the virtual environment is re-forming our very psychologies, social interactions, and ways of understanding.  The very foundation of humanity is transitioning right before our eyes from a material based consciousness to a digital material based consciousness. I am alarmed because crafts people who are intrinsically connected to this material foundation are not talking about it.  We are literally losing touch with our humanity.  Could this circumstance be the impetus to the resurgence in craft? Furthermore, if this circumstance is as critical as I suggest, does this new digital based psychology not reformat the very notion of aesthetics, nullifying the distinctions between the individual disciplines of art, craft, and design or in the very least, completely expand their previous definitions? I suggest that those who continue to practice making by hand will become the utmost revolutionary but not by continuing to objectify necessity or intention, but rather by reconciling in an adaptive manner the non-material qualities of traditional craft material, those qualities being likened to the amorphous and the metamorphic.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Some Kind’a Function - New window display downtown Portland


Clay as a technology persists in sustaining our material consciousness, even within the context a digital age.  Outdated, yet analogous to the infinite possibilities of digital form, clay serves as a relatable and familiar construct for affirming a hybrid psychology between physical and virtual realities.





Window display downtown Portland until mid-August 2011.  At the Galleria, 10th and Morrison SE.

Monday, May 9, 2011

MFA - Jason Lee Starin - Opening Reception May 19th, Thursday, 6pm - 9pm


An Absolute Survey of Unthinkable Complexity
A suspended moment is presented which asks the viewer to locate themselves simultaneously in physical, digital, and virtual space - offering varied representations of the same form, made manifest as well as illusory, to act as re-orientation points within a hybrid consciousness. 
Jason Lee Starin
MFA Applied Craft & Design Graduate Off-Site Practicum Installation
Opening Reception May 19th, Thursday, 6pm - 9pm
524 SE Ash. Portland, OR. 97214

Friday, May 6, 2011

An Absolute Survey of Unthinkable Complexity


My practicum project asks the viewer to locate themselves simultaneously in physical, digital, and virtual space.  The viewer enters a room containing wooden columns that stand on the floor, a digital projector which projects images of similar-looking columns on one wall, and mirrors that face each other on parallel walls.  The mirrors create the illusion that all of these elements are one and the same: the physical columns, the digital images of the columns, and the virtual images of columns in the mirror.  
This experience offers varied representations of the same form, made manifest as well as illusory, to act as orientation points within our consciousness.  How will people adapt mentally to the continuing loss of the physical object, a growing cultural tendency?  From the viewpoint of a craftsman, I ask how craft thinking will adapt as a creative discipline to this new phenomenon.  I suggest that it will continue to help us locate ourselves in space, in other words to continue to define our identities, as it has done in the past.  The non-material qualities of the craft object, alluding to the craft process, will be called upon to help sustain our continued survival.
My perspective is that of a maker, or more appropriately producer, as it suggests making within a consciousness that has been developed from these two realities.  Form, which was previously dependent on physical laws and limitations, has gained a new perspective.  As digital technologies have done away with the barriers of physical properties, new sensibilities will develop through their continued use.  Once the potentials and limitations of digital material have been made conscious through use, we will then see how their properties impact the physical, in a reciprocal and influential manner.   
My opposition is that the illusion of sameness falsely sustains our expectations of how digital technology ought to be received. It also creates assumptions of controllability when perceived solely on a tactile basis.  I ask the viewer to relinquish their desire to comprehend this space by purely physical or virtual means, and accept the current situation in a new way: as a suspended moment of which to consider new hybrid definitions of space, form, and more importantly, self.  This multi-sensorial experience is a bodily one, which includes the eyes, the hand, as well as the brain.  As Mark B.N. Hanson  states, “... the absolute survey can be said to exemplify the task of art as process in the information age: to frame information in order to produce new images and, we must now add, new forms and spaces as well.” 
Jason Lee Starin

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Virtual Impacts - The Hand is Dead

Virtual Impacts - The Hand is Dead

The hand is dead. I blame art. With art, we have chosen to de-sensitize our interpretations of the world around us. We abstracted our perceptions of the world in favor of intellectual and conceptual hierarchy. Art, objects which we know by our memories of materiality, skill, and making, is a practice of seeing and hearing. It's very clean. Art keeps the world at arms length. Art’s view point on the world is simpler. Touch must be too personal; too involved. There are three types of things we can’t touch in this world. Art, virtual reality, and the dead. Yet, even the dead must be moved at times. RIP.
Art, as we have considered it for its immaterial values, has placed craft and design as its inferior. Thus, art has set in our cultures mind that that which cannot be touched has more meaning. Hitched to the readymade, art has claimed all the material world as its own. We see the world not for its physical attributes, but for its immaterial and conceptual potentials. The physical world has been abstracted down to a mere framework for thought porn. Arts main contribution to culture? The cutting off of our hands; setting our minds free.
With all of these ideas, they needed a place to go, and so the advent of virtual reality. An immaterial environment based on the memories of the once meaningful physical world. What natural species creates their own environment? Not one. We are no longer a natural species. We have created a whole reality that is based on values we have exaggerated beyond necessity. Entertainment, communication and information have become the new social constructs of the virtual environment. We used to know a thing by its natural and physical law. Dimension gave as form, space and let us knew where we stood. But no longer.
We used to find value in our selves by the meaning instilled in things. Sentimental things, treasured heirlooms, honest tools, objectified memories... Now I wait for a message on my ‘wall’ or a text in the middle of the night. I am available all the time now. My virtual identity never sleeps. I never have privacy.
These thoughts are not new. Nor are they shocking. They have been around since the advent of communications and documentation technology. This much I know. What I do not know is how our digital sensibilities, our virtual reality will impact our notion of self. Both as individuals and as a species. As a craftsman, a maker of physical things, I wonder if I have been eliminated. Sure, people will retort, stating that my work is valid, but for how much longer. Technology has its own will, or it will someday. It is a force now, larger than we can grasp, literally and mentally. The world of things has changed dramatically. We are in the middle of great transition. As the immaterial world continues to expand, the physical world will become more and more unrecognizable. Where will I know where to stand? What markers will direct me? What will I be able to hold onto? If these questions do not come up in my lifetime, surly they will in the next generation's.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Sloppy Tea Cup Series





"Going beyond the visual interest in form,these sculptural tea cups allude to the haptic senses through interpretive touch. Each experience invites further explorations of the daily act between the hand and the lip."

Photos by Laura Allcorn and Julie Pointer