Joanna Platt

Much of my work deals with the ways our interaction with technology has created new configurations of defined space inside our computers and media devices, how these devices process and alter memory, and the effect of these external entities on the body. For this show, I was inspired by the kaleidoscope made by Steven and Debra Gray. However, I wanted to see the view through the lens not as a series of abstract patterns caused by reflections of colored images, but as something relevant to the wood itself. Exploring the concept in plywood, I became fascinated with the knotholes (amputations, scars), often seen as imperfections but immaculately beautiful in the almost kaleidoscopic patterns the wood grain forms around the dead branch. I took video of pine branches and placed the footage behind a lens where the knothole was in a sheet of plywood. Through these lenses, images of the lost branch are also projected forward, pushing and pulling, causing the viewer to occupy a different location neither fully inside nor outside the work.