Back to Exhibitions

Touched Kathleen McCarthy An Installation for Real and Virtual Spaces Presented in conjunction with GO WEST Ontario college of Art & Design Exhibition April 23 - 25, 2004

The Luddite and the technophile have found an imperfect dichotomy in me: I long for the sense of touch that I leave behind each time I step into the virtual worlds of the images that I create, and yet I resent the restrictive nature of my embodied being within the real world when I am forced to remerge from within those imagined image worlds behind my screen. "Touched" prompts viewers to touch objects made of light and code with fingers that cannot transcend the barriers of the screen, fingers which nonetheless effect change within the space the eye perceives behind the screen. Within "touched" the button becomes a metaphorical bridge into the virtual image and information spaces which we create when we use technology; in the same way that shirt buttons fasten together the surfaces of the clothing we wear, the analog to digital buttons on our mice, keyboards and touch-screens, fasten our physical realities to our virtual realities within which virtual buttons--hotspots, graphic "buttons" and links, become the interfaces which make the referents of the virtual world of the digital image sensible and real to their users in the real world. "Touched" literally examines the metaphor that is the virtual space it creates. Bio Kathleen McCarthy is a ceramicist/sculptress and digital media artist. I am now producing work that wants to be touched, yet exists just out of reach--behind the screen. Soon to graduate from the Ontario College of Art & Design's Integrated Media Program, having specialized in computer-based art I plan to pursue the production of virtual artworks, perhaps allowing them to creep out from behind the screen and into real space every once in a while as "Touched" has done.