St. Mary's Projects in Studio Art:

Diana Abells / SMP 2011

 

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to figure out what the world really was. Not in terms of word or equation but rather in terms of my body. I have laid on my back, with one leg sprawled out across the floor and the other stretched up a nearby wall, trying to map out where vertical meets horizontal, wondering how my body fits into that axis. The force of the wall and floor push back at me, and, as my blood flows with primal urgency, a Cartesian coordinate space springs up against my legs. This is the beginning of physics, where objects are taken out of their original world and placed in specifically defined coordinate space.

My goal is to take physical analysis out of its abstract space by defining a new space with the physical and cognitive properties of the human body. I take in raw data of my motion, through video and observational drawing, and then frame it in a new coordinate system that contains details describing both the visceral experience of that motion and the body's cognition of that motion. Through this process, I want to figure out a way to observe and measure the world as a function of the body's physical experience of it.