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Extended Practice in Interactive Media - (UA1A7A-60-MA) Tutor: Michaela Reiser

Ross Wallis - Academic year: 2009/2010


This site charts an exploration of playfulness in relation to my practice as artist, teacher and digital creative.

Over the year I have developed three interrelated practical projects:

  • Cadavre exquis - a web and iphone app based on the parlour game ‘consequences’
  • Scrubbing - an iphone app inspired by the flip book, zoetrope and stop frame animation
  • Photoshop pingpong - website based around collaborative photomontage: digital cadavre exquis

The practical work has led me on three interrelated, intertwining routes:

Movement: The kinetic and the kinaesthetic, to move, touch and feel - the haptic interface of the Apple iphone and ‘touch’ and the gadgets being fascinating objects in themselves, like pebbles or a penknife. As this new medium/media unfolds and playful apps proliferate, I see parallels between early photographic and cinematic experimentation and current developments in digital media/magic.

Montage: My own artistic practice inclines towards photographic imagery, montage and surreal juxtaposition, the more so with the advent of digital image manipulation. My intention has been to further explore digital cut and paste using the power of web based media and content management systems. The roots of this exploration are myriad in the art of the 20th century, and deeply ingrained in my artistic heritage, the meme that I pass on.

Mind: Mind and undermind - the conscious and subconscious - surrealist territory - but less cerebral, more touch and feel - visceral, intuitive.These routes/roots inevitably took me into the nature of play and creativity as underlying both my artistic and my teaching practice.

The links above are to my proposal of one a year ago, and an overview/map of the ground that covered since.

The website is built around 3 levels of navigation using Rapidweaver on an Apple macbook, tested in Safari with a screen resolution of 1440 x 900
cartwheel
Cartwheeling; photo by Ross Wallis - Navigation bar: Locomotor ataxia, walking by Eadweard Muybridge © Dover Publications Inc.
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