johnslep.net

Welcome to johnslep.net. As with all web sites, this site is continually in progress. Please check back periodically for updates.

Update
Recent exhibitions include "the kiss" at the San Jose ICA from June 1 to August 11, 2007, my piece "caged" in a show at Axiom Gallery in Boston from August 10 to September 8, 2007, and "caged" again from November 29, 2007 to January 12, 2008 at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Franciso.

The video page has been updated with high quality Flash video documentation.

I was recently appointed the Five Colleges Assistant Professor of Art and Technology. I will be teaching a variety of art courses at both Hampshire and Smith Colleges and have relocated to Western Massachusetts.

Statement
For the last five years, my project has been to create digitally generated photographs, video installations, and interactive computer installations that investigate what it is that makes us feel human—something that in this world of rapidly advancing, and often paradigm-shifting, technologies, it is becoming harder and harder to delineate. Through the use of some of these very same technologies (3D computer graphics and interactive programming, in particular), I have created a series of works depicting organic forms that are apparently derived from the human body. Though enormously simplified, they exhibit identifiable gestures and behaviors. These virtual objects are clearly fictitious, yet they can inspire empathy, disgust, and fascination. They are intended to elicit an awareness of the disjunctions that can occur between one's emotional and intellectual reactions, and thereby provoke in the viewer a consideration of the process through which we come to identify with the objects of our gaze.

-- john slepian