2005 "Beapworks", Perth, Australia 2005 "404 II International Festival of Electronic Arts", Rosario, Argentina 2006 "Intersections"- Siggraph2006, Boston, USA 2006 "File06" Sao Paulo, Brazil 2007 "Bios4", Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville , Spain
A number of myths and metaphors are used to describe the origin of picture making, most of which involve shadows. Plato's Cave allegory describes how our understanding of the world through vision is not necessarily the same as what is physically visible. Within the installation Biophilia the participant and her shadow is synthesized into a larger cultural picture of self and place yet reduced to a derivative echo containing both, "resemblance and menace" .The shadow resembles the participant, a virtual manifestation of the relationship the user has with the screen. At once reduced to a 2 dimensional image which menacingly begins to merge with other organisms in the same screen space without consent nor care for the sovereignty of the users concept of self and space. |
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Within the installation Biophilia, the relationships between inside and outside can also be expressed between computer code and interiority, known and unknown. Code sits beneath the surface and can be autopoetic and capable of self-organization producing scary unknown emergent properties. The coding process although originally known produces these self organising properties in the darkness of the machine, eluding attempts to construct clean boundaries between known and unknown |
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Biophilia compacts the distance between subject and object, inside and outside. Where "the reproductive value of certain signs is dependent upon processes of symbiotic or co-evolutionary signification and communication." Likewise Biophilia creates hybrid forms, which emerge through the complex interaction between, theory and practice, matter and representation. Where what matters is not necessarily human. |
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Mark Cypher received a Master of Visual Arts in Sculpture, in 1995, from Sydney University, Australia, and is currently a Senior Lecturer and Program Chair for Multimedia at Murdoch University - Western Australia. Mark also began his PHD in 2004 researching Actor Network Theory in relation to interactive artworks. Cypher has participated in several international exhibitions, including “404” II International Festival of Electronic Arts, Rosario, Argentina, and “Biophilia” at the Perth International Arts Festival, Curtin University, Western Australia. Cypher has also exhibited work in various museums and galleries across Australia, including , the Western Australian Art Gallery, Sunshine Coast Gallery, Melbourne Contemporary art show and the Casula Powerhouse, Sydney. Cypher’s work is also held in several state and national collections such as the Art Gallery of Western Australia, ArtBank-Sydney, Casula Powerhouse-Sydney, Curtin University of Technology and University of Western Australia.