Date of Award

Spring 6-6-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Digital Media

First Advisor

Mark Cetilia

Second Advisor

Fletcher Bach

Third Advisor

Nora Khan

Abstract

This collection of stories takes place in a nearby dimension, in which objects and entities that are obsolete, mundane, discarded, or overlooked, define alternative rules for value and purpose. Here, a broken machine suffers an existential crisis while a hungry spider explores its interior; a dog imagines life as a moth; a feral creature escapes from a woman’s mind; and a worker suffers spam email induced headaches. United by the destructive capitalist logic of planned obsolescence and an attraction to blue light, these characters traverse mind, matter, metaphor, and technology to find their way into new forms, reinventing themselves and/as one another. This project seeks to disrupt cycles of waste and create space for alternatives to technological decay. Through exploring, confusing, and subverting the ways we are conditioned to engage with media and technology—what is considered safe, dangerous, desirable, valuable, meaningful, functional, or possible—this project proposes an alternative reality for those things we throw away.

Comments

View exhibition online: Kat Jarvinen, The Reliquary of Feral Devices

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