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SLIDE 1
Aerial Fields, Video Drone artwork 2013 Sylvia Grace Borda has developed a series of films using a video-equipped drone as a way to revitalize the position of the artist/video-maker as both observer and voyeur. Artists such as Millais and Atget, whether with easel or camera, were only able to capture orchards and farmland from ground perspective. In her project, Aerial Fields, the vast carpeted and dense plantings are rendered as a continuous horizontal plane – something rarely experienced in art or life. |
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SLIDE 2
Farm Tableaux
Google Street View artworks
2013
Google Street View uses a platform where a series of stitched still images allow the viewer to move from one location point to another. In the Farm Tableaux series Sylvia has created a dimensional photograph using a number of these points to create an image tableau. In collaborating as a photo-artist with Google Trusted photography, she created the first artworks in Google Street view. The resulting series plays with technology, culture, and performance; for example, each tableaux participant stood motionless for up to 30 minutes in order to be captured by Google cameras, a process not dissimilar to the slow exposures of 19th Century photography in studio portraiture. These Google portrait sitters are, thus, caught in a glance by the camera in multiple viewpoints in both space and time.
In enabling the public to find their own view in Google the artist breaks from Susan Sontag’s notion of the “fixed frame” so the viewer can move 360 degrees around the subject, up and down, forwards and backwards, gathering a broader context along the way of the area recorded.
Still from 'Finley's Rhododendrons' Google Street View tableaux
See original net artwork at http://goo.gl/maps/Ah90q
Farm Tableaux
Google Street View artworks
2013
Google Street View uses a platform where a series of stitched still images allow the viewer to move from one location point to another. In the Farm Tableaux series Sylvia has created a dimensional photograph using a number of these points to create an image tableau. In collaborating as a photo-artist with Google Trusted photography, she created the first artworks in Google Street view. The resulting series plays with technology, culture, and performance; for example, each tableaux participant stood motionless for up to 30 minutes in order to be captured by Google cameras, a process not dissimilar to the slow exposures of 19th Century photography in studio portraiture. These Google portrait sitters are, thus, caught in a glance by the camera in multiple viewpoints in both space and time.
In enabling the public to find their own view in Google the artist breaks from Susan Sontag’s notion of the “fixed frame” so the viewer can move 360 degrees around the subject, up and down, forwards and backwards, gathering a broader context along the way of the area recorded.
Still from 'Finley's Rhododendrons' Google Street View tableaux
See original net artwork at http://goo.gl/maps/Ah90q
SLIDE 4
Farm Tableaux: Zaklan Heritage Producers
Google Street View artworks
2013
Farm Tableaux: Zaklan Heritage Producers
Google Street View artworks
2013
SLIDE 5
Mise en scene
Panorama images from staged Google Street View tours
2014
The Mise en scene work is created by stitching a number of pano-spheres together to form an image that captures a near 360 degree of rural production spaces. While the panorama is a still image, it is also the foundation of a Google Street View interactive, thereby, offering the viewer a dimensional photograph to explore more intimately. In its both still and interactive format the concepts of Mise en scene as a means to understand design aspects from lighting to the environment can be more fully by the viewer in order to realise the construct and staging of these artworks.
Mise en scene
Panorama images from staged Google Street View tours
2014
The Mise en scene work is created by stitching a number of pano-spheres together to form an image that captures a near 360 degree of rural production spaces. While the panorama is a still image, it is also the foundation of a Google Street View interactive, thereby, offering the viewer a dimensional photograph to explore more intimately. In its both still and interactive format the concepts of Mise en scene as a means to understand design aspects from lighting to the environment can be more fully by the viewer in order to realise the construct and staging of these artworks.
SLIDE 6
Mise en scene
Panorama images from staged Google Street View tours
2014
Mise en scene
Panorama images from staged Google Street View tours
2014
SLIDE 7
Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets
2013
Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets is an on-going series in which a camera is placed on the horizon of each watercolour ground. The cameras' lenses hover in place of the sun in these digitally constructed montages.
Like Magritte’s Ceci n'est pas une pipe this series offers the viewer a set of contradictions to negotiate in order to understand the work. The cameras and watercolour paintings are referenced by name in the title but by medium are reproductions, which do not "satisfy emotionally” the actual objects and/or depicted events.
Each image is constructed from amateur photographs of cameras and watercolour paintings from online auction websites. As digital constructs from found web photographs, the series also collapses time, media, and locations together. The series also draws on the metaphoric notion that sunsets can also allude to 'an end.' Indeed the juxtaposition of the analog cameras depicted with the sunsets references the slow change over to digital recording techniques and the end to the days wherein film cameras were favoured by amateur photographers.
SLIDE 8
Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets
2013
SLIDE 9
Impressions
Digital print
2013
In Impressions Sylvia has captured traces of 16th-17th century illustrated prints of scientific observation. These faint images appear on facing pages within their original bound volumes and resemble early image silhouettes made by first photo cameras. In this series of 2o images these tracings are transformed as colour reversed digital renderings or image negatives – ready to be printed out again.
SLIDE 10
Impressions
Digital print
2013
Impressions
Digital print
2013
SLIDE 11
Barcodes: Three Vegetable
Digital print
2001
Sylvia has been an early pioneer of digital media art and collage. In a series developed between 1999-2001 she addressed the ideologies of two modern art movements, Pop and Hard Edge or Minimal painting, in their most reduced forms through the barcode, which represents the smallest indexical unit available in today’s culture that maintains the identity of a product. By reproducing Warhol’s soup can pictures through their barcode format an irony is formed between culture and perception. Warhol’s pieces were recognizable by their form, shape and direct reference to Campbell soup can labels, by using barcodes to reference the soups, the relationship between the viewer and the object becomes distant and estranged. The reception of the barcode as an artform parallels Pop’s earliest reception – it is seen as cold and mechanical. The work, though produced by an automated mechanism, the computer, must be hand plotted. The barcode becomes a metaphor for societal differences in perceiving computer generated art. The codes displayed in large scale are easily recognizable in terms of their purpose; however, the overlapping codes lose indexical use and become an abstract field of lines reminiscent of the Hard Edge compositions of late modernist painters like Newman and Noland.
SLIDE 12
Student work
University of Stirling International Studies Summer programme 2014
6 week assignment
Students were led through a series of lectures and workshops by Sylvia in order to learn how to build a camera obscura. The student assignment was three-fold. Firstly to construct a camera by using provided lens, found cardboard boxes, and a plastic bag for the focusing screen. Secondly students needed to draw the scene from the camera, then digitally record a number of scenes projected from the camera obscura. As part of the evolution of learning about the camera obscura into a functional camera the students needed to make their box light tight so it could record a negative on photographic paper. Student groups were also tasked with producing a series of hand-made filters to learn first hand how past imaging techniques were created. Lastly students were guided how to reverse engineer their paper camera into a photo enlarger.
After assisting with the Canadian Glocal arts initiative (2008-10) associated with the Winter Olympics 2010, Sylvia returned to the UK to implement curriculum for the launch of the inaugural digital photography and media arts programme at the School of Design and Visual Art, University of Salford-Manchester (2010).
Throughout her teaching career to date, Sylvia has delivered over 120 different course modules, and designed nearly half of them. She has a wide range of subject expertise and has taught new media and photography applied, as well as, theory courses – encompassing visual art, design communication, software systems, and art history as part of studio driven and technology programs at both under and graduate levels.
Teaching Philosophy:
Integral to her practice is the encouragement of dialogue and exchange. Her courses examine how cognitive responses evolve over time in relation to design and cultural events. Her own lecturing interests lie particularly in the examination of popular culture and in the emergence of new structural and visual systems.
Overall Sylvia's teaching philosophy is to present a balance of history, theory and direct application so that students will be able to position themselves confidently in relation to contemporary and historical aesthetics. Within a context of examining past and current practices, students are encouraged to experiment and explore new techniques, alongside new ways of assessing media, criticality and self-reflection. The attainment of information (conceptual content, theoretical frameworks, and exercises) and technique (process) are balanced and equal in accomplishing a successful learning outcome (e.g. art production). Similarly, she encourages dialogue between student and teacher, emphasizing that it should always be reciprocal in order to achieve the maximum benefit.
Community Mentoring and Collaborative Engagement
Since 2009 to present, Sylvia has worked full-time on the development of community engaged and public art projects. She was well regarded for developing FLORA WATCH (2010), a studio programme investigating local flora in Northern Ireland, which led to over 150 youth being trained to investigate and respond to the natural environment within the urban-scape.
This program led to a national conference being hosted by Visual Arts Ireland discussing the long-term benefits of Sylvia’s work in community engagement and arts development.
Following this project, Sylvia led the proposal for the development of a large-scale camera obscura art-dwelling (2010-11) to be built as part of a national reconciliation program between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This programme was part of a larger scheme Sylvia won through EU Peace III funds, which also included the delivery of a series of artist mentoring classes for artists in Counties Cavan, Monaghan, and Fermanagh.
During 2012-13, she led an arts engagement and exhibition programme entitled 'This one's for the farmer' wherein she worked diverse groups including the BC Young Farmers Association, the Canadian Military, Transport Canada, Surrey Farmer’s Market Association, and City of Surrey Planning department amongst others to create inclusive bodies of artwork about farming issues today. Through this endeavour Sylvia illustrated the value of farm land as it moves from transitional rural landscape to contemporary sites of tension in Surrey, BC, Canada caught between sub-divisions and civic redevelopments.
Throughout her residency period at the Surrey Art Gallery, BC (2013) she attracted both farmers and the arts community to talks, public days, and exhibition events. Sylvia continued to defend and define why farming is integral to the wider definition of being a Canadian. She was able to provide solid evidence about the connections between farming and its legacies to Lawren Harris. Not only was Harris a founding member of the Group of Seven but he was also the heir of a farm equipment fortune, namely the Harris-Massey company. Of note Lawren Harris used his personal funds (1910-40s) to create a contemporary framework for Canada’s arts to develop and grow. For the farming community, Sylvia was able to provide a framework illustrating how agricultural industries and monies assisted in developing Canada's contemporary arts scene. This research in addition to her community engagement program has started to earn her international recognition.
In 2014, Sylvia has been awarded an EU 'Frontiers in Retreat' commission and will continue to portray farming beyond its romantic stereotypical notions. While using art history as a foundation to inform her production, Sylvia will collaborate with communities to accurately produce narratives that become contemporary portraits of our time and provide reflections on the social realities of modern life farming.
Additionally Sylvia also investigates her key concerns in the form of publications, conference speaking, and through various other community roles. For the artist her commissions and educational programming remain inter-dependent, informing and developing one another.
For a full curriculum vitae click here
Throughout her teaching career to date, Sylvia has delivered over 120 different course modules, and designed nearly half of them. She has a wide range of subject expertise and has taught new media and photography applied, as well as, theory courses – encompassing visual art, design communication, software systems, and art history as part of studio driven and technology programs at both under and graduate levels.
Teaching Philosophy:
Integral to her practice is the encouragement of dialogue and exchange. Her courses examine how cognitive responses evolve over time in relation to design and cultural events. Her own lecturing interests lie particularly in the examination of popular culture and in the emergence of new structural and visual systems.
Overall Sylvia's teaching philosophy is to present a balance of history, theory and direct application so that students will be able to position themselves confidently in relation to contemporary and historical aesthetics. Within a context of examining past and current practices, students are encouraged to experiment and explore new techniques, alongside new ways of assessing media, criticality and self-reflection. The attainment of information (conceptual content, theoretical frameworks, and exercises) and technique (process) are balanced and equal in accomplishing a successful learning outcome (e.g. art production). Similarly, she encourages dialogue between student and teacher, emphasizing that it should always be reciprocal in order to achieve the maximum benefit.
Community Mentoring and Collaborative Engagement
Since 2009 to present, Sylvia has worked full-time on the development of community engaged and public art projects. She was well regarded for developing FLORA WATCH (2010), a studio programme investigating local flora in Northern Ireland, which led to over 150 youth being trained to investigate and respond to the natural environment within the urban-scape.
This program led to a national conference being hosted by Visual Arts Ireland discussing the long-term benefits of Sylvia’s work in community engagement and arts development.
Following this project, Sylvia led the proposal for the development of a large-scale camera obscura art-dwelling (2010-11) to be built as part of a national reconciliation program between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This programme was part of a larger scheme Sylvia won through EU Peace III funds, which also included the delivery of a series of artist mentoring classes for artists in Counties Cavan, Monaghan, and Fermanagh.
During 2012-13, she led an arts engagement and exhibition programme entitled 'This one's for the farmer' wherein she worked diverse groups including the BC Young Farmers Association, the Canadian Military, Transport Canada, Surrey Farmer’s Market Association, and City of Surrey Planning department amongst others to create inclusive bodies of artwork about farming issues today. Through this endeavour Sylvia illustrated the value of farm land as it moves from transitional rural landscape to contemporary sites of tension in Surrey, BC, Canada caught between sub-divisions and civic redevelopments.
Throughout her residency period at the Surrey Art Gallery, BC (2013) she attracted both farmers and the arts community to talks, public days, and exhibition events. Sylvia continued to defend and define why farming is integral to the wider definition of being a Canadian. She was able to provide solid evidence about the connections between farming and its legacies to Lawren Harris. Not only was Harris a founding member of the Group of Seven but he was also the heir of a farm equipment fortune, namely the Harris-Massey company. Of note Lawren Harris used his personal funds (1910-40s) to create a contemporary framework for Canada’s arts to develop and grow. For the farming community, Sylvia was able to provide a framework illustrating how agricultural industries and monies assisted in developing Canada's contemporary arts scene. This research in addition to her community engagement program has started to earn her international recognition.
In 2014, Sylvia has been awarded an EU 'Frontiers in Retreat' commission and will continue to portray farming beyond its romantic stereotypical notions. While using art history as a foundation to inform her production, Sylvia will collaborate with communities to accurately produce narratives that become contemporary portraits of our time and provide reflections on the social realities of modern life farming.
Additionally Sylvia also investigates her key concerns in the form of publications, conference speaking, and through various other community roles. For the artist her commissions and educational programming remain inter-dependent, informing and developing one another.
For a full curriculum vitae click here