Wight, Gail

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https://hdl.handle.net/1813/4002

In attempts to understand thinking, I have: made maps of various nervous systems, practiced art while under hypnosis, designed an artificial intelligence to read my tarot, read for hours to fish, conducted biochemical experiments on myself and others, stolen linen from the Nobel ceremonies in search of laureate DNA, executed medical illustrations in black velvet, documented dissections of humans, dissected machines and failed to put most of them back together, freely made up vocabulary as needed, removed my teeth to model information systems, induced phobias in myself concerning consciousness in the plant kingdom, donated my body to science and then requested it be returned, observed nerve development in vivo, choreographed synaptic responses, translated EEGs into music, conducted a cartesian exorcism on myself, and attempted to create cognitive models of my own severely confused state.

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2005 Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal
Wight, Gail (2007-01-05T14:19:15Z)
Personal Zoo is a collection of small fantastical creatures, figments of my imagination, which respond to the visitors of their clinical, lab-like zoo. At the first, their new forms, extra parts, and odd behaviors suggest that they emerge from current experiments in genetics. Yet while they are most likely not "alive", they do exhibit intelligent behavior, evoking an emotional response, a connection, to their visitors. As an earlier generation imagined and feared a brave new world in the thrall of a robotic superclass, the current generation does the same with the specter of genetics.
Rockefeller New Media Foundation --Supplementary Material
Wight, Gail (2006-12-18T18:22:17Z)
12 installation slides: 1-2: "Kings Play Cards..." interactive computer projection. 2003. (installation & main screen) 3-4: "Linnaeuus Unbound" large chart with video activated by touch screen. 2001. 5-8: "Meditations on Evolution" interactive cd-rom. 2002. (main screen & three details) 9: "Star Struck" sculpture with motorized robot & video. 2001. 10: "Future Flight" sculpture with video & audio. 2000. 11: "Honey" interactive sculpture with ultrasonic sensors & sound 1999. 12: "A Tale of Two Slimes" sculpture with book & time-lapse video. 1996.
2004 Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal
Wight, Gail (2006-12-18T17:58:39Z)
I have recently been invited to create a piece for an exhibit called 'The Brides of Frankenstein' curated by Marcia Tanner for the San Jose Museum of Art, California. This exhibit would coincide with a Bay Area Cyber Art Festival to open in late 2005. I'11 be creating a series of portraits for this exhibit, based on seven women who were practicing science just prior to and during the time of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. These portraits would also engage the current phenomenon of automatons - spectacular constructions of artificial humans. I believe that as social constructs, as spectacles, and as "monsters," women scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries shared much in common with these automatons. Most importantly, both were objects of a belief system that saw them as impostors, as threats, and as something less than fully human. These portraits would involve interactive video, incorporating audio with moving and still imagery accessed by touch screen, set into automaton-like armatures. They would be slightly larger than life, yet would evoke an ephemeral quality of existence. Hybrids of the human and mechanical, they would investigate eighteenth and nineteenth century concepts about women, science, machines, and their convergence.

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