Sylvia Grace Borda | Artist Website
  • Mise en Scene
    • Mise en Scene
  • Farm Work
  • Farm Tableaux - Google Street View
  • Aerial Fields
  • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2020-21
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2017-19
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2013-14
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2010-12
  • Interrogations of a Camera
  • This is not a camera
  • Impressions
  • Seeing Technologies
  • Northern Ireland
    • Coming to the Table
    • Orchards
  • Kissing Project
  • Past Projects
    • Public Art Commission: Number 4 Pump Station
    • Community Engagement: Seeing Across Boundaries
    • Public Art Commission: Cuneo Camera Obscura
  • Artist Bio
    • Artist Bio
    • Teaching Practice
    • Public Speaking
    • Request a lecture
    • Purchasing Art
  • Exhibition History
    • Exhibition History
    • Reviews
  • Contact
  • News
  • Camera Histories
  • Momento Mori
  • Stereoworks
    • Two if not Three
    • Aura
    • Viewpoints
    • This is not a camera
  • re-COLLECT-ing
  • EK Modernism
    • EK Modernism series
    • Project legacies
    • Canada series
  • A Holiday in Glenrothes
  • Every Bus Stop in Surrey, BC
  • This one's for the farmer
  • Social engagement
  • Lumsden Biscuit
    • Social Enterprise
    • Edible photograph
  • What are you doing Richmond
  • Snow Cameras
  • Hunting Cameras
  • Architecture
    • Architecture
    • Preplanning design
    • House as Social Agent
    • Generous Architecture
  • Digital Art
  • Shifting Perspectives Book
  • Mise en Scene
    • Mise en Scene
  • Farm Work
  • Farm Tableaux - Google Street View
  • Aerial Fields
  • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2020-21
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2017-19
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2013-14
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2010-12
  • Interrogations of a Camera
  • This is not a camera
  • Impressions
  • Seeing Technologies
  • Northern Ireland
    • Coming to the Table
    • Orchards
  • Kissing Project
  • Past Projects
    • Public Art Commission: Number 4 Pump Station
    • Community Engagement: Seeing Across Boundaries
    • Public Art Commission: Cuneo Camera Obscura
  • Artist Bio
    • Artist Bio
    • Teaching Practice
    • Public Speaking
    • Request a lecture
    • Purchasing Art
  • Exhibition History
    • Exhibition History
    • Reviews
  • Contact
  • News
  • Camera Histories
  • Momento Mori
  • Stereoworks
    • Two if not Three
    • Aura
    • Viewpoints
    • This is not a camera
  • re-COLLECT-ing
  • EK Modernism
    • EK Modernism series
    • Project legacies
    • Canada series
  • A Holiday in Glenrothes
  • Every Bus Stop in Surrey, BC
  • This one's for the farmer
  • Social engagement
  • Lumsden Biscuit
    • Social Enterprise
    • Edible photograph
  • What are you doing Richmond
  • Snow Cameras
  • Hunting Cameras
  • Architecture
    • Architecture
    • Preplanning design
    • House as Social Agent
    • Generous Architecture
  • Digital Art
  • Shifting Perspectives Book

Farm Tableaux
  | 2013 -15

Sylvia Grace Borda has worked closely to create the first explorative artworks in Google Street view in partnership with Google Trusted Street view photographer, John M Lynch, both in Canada (see below) and in Finland (see Mise en Scene| Farm Tableaux series).

Her Canadian series simply entitled FARM TABLEAUX captures farmers  enacting a routine activity, but unlike conventionally staged photographs, the observer can explore these framed compositions within an interactive Google Street View landscape.

Sylvia tasked each of the TABLEAUX participants to stand motionless for periods of up to 40 minutes in order to be captured by Google cameras. In this way,
Sylvia has cleverly reverse engineered photographic practices in which the slow exposures of 19th century photography resulted in studio sitters being propped up for several minutes to allow a portrait image to be recorded. The artist has staged her subjects so they become 3-dimensional portrait sitters caught in a glance by the camera in multiple viewpoints in space and time. The artist breaks with Sontag's notion of a singular frame to offer the viewer many viewpoints that are all available simultaneously in order to compose our own views, too.

These choreographed scenes enable notions of expanded cinema to be encountered by the online viewer. By the artist incorporating panoramas of farming landscapes using Google Street view, she has fundamentally expanded the vocabulary and notion of public space.
Sylvia’s artwork becomes a distributed form of collectivity and a record of new visuality on the Internet.

FARM TABLEAUX pushes the boundaries of what constitutes contemporary online art and photography whilst also defining social connectedness in the context of a highly visual and hybrid ‘commons’ of geography, time and the tableau vivant.



Farm Tableaux artworks See and explore the dimensional photographs first hand through the following links:

Medomist Farm Ltd, Surrey, BC, Canada


http://tinyurl.com/gr4us75

Clover Valley Organic Farm, Surrey, BC, Canada

http://tinyurl.com/jv9rhc2

Finley's Rhododendrons, Surrey, BC, Canada

https://goo.gl/maps/805gN

Zaklan Heritage Farm, Surrey, BC, Canada


http://tinyurl.com/jhgy5sv

Rondriso Farm, Surrey, BC, Canada

http://tinyurl.com/z8oqhcc

Farm Tableaux stills:

Of note Sylvia and John M Lynch were awarded by an international jury in September 2016 a LUMEN AWARD for their innovative and progressive work in net art.
Picture
Working in Surrey, BC
Sylvia acknowledges as an artist working in the City of Surrey, she has photographed and worked on the unceded territories and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen First Nations, and she pays respect to the Elders, past and present, and to future generations.

Interactive map resources such as Native Land (2015), Whose Land (2017) and Indigenous Peoples Atlas (2018) can help identify territories. As always maps are fluid and ever changing and can be used as educational tools to create dialogue around reconciliation.


Project reviews

2020


A critical discussion about the artist's development of Farm Tableaux is included in the book, Shifting Perspectives, co-published by Surrey Art Gallery and Heritage House Publishers (Canada) www.surrey.ca/arts-culture/surrey-art-gallery/gallery-publications/exhibition-catalogues/shifting-perspectives
​

2016

The Farm Tableaux Canada series was long-listed and won the Lumen Prize for Web Arts in September. This prize has been described in the Guardian as the most preeminent and global digital arts prize to date. http://lumenprize.com/

Parhar, Katherine. "Farm Tableaux" in Feature essays, July edition, Photomonitor Magazine.
http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2016/07/sylvia-grace-borda-farm-tableaux/

"The only thing that’s changed is everything: An essay by Rebecca Travis on Sylvia Grace Borda: Camera Histories"
in the 2016 Summer edition of Scottish Society for the History of Photography
http://sshop.org.uk/project/rebecca-travis/

Castro, Xosé on PRENSA RTVE (Spanish National TV) for the Arts, reviews Farm Tableaux. 27.09.2016
http://www.rtve.es/rtve/20160927/escritora-espido-freire-hablara-su-debut-como-actriz-teatral-esta-semana-atencion-obras/1414824.shtml


2014           
Fremantle, Chris. “Farm Tableaux” in eco/art/scot/land Jan 25, 2014. http://ecoartscotland.net/2014/01/25/farm-tableaux/


2013            
Arva-Toth, Zoltan . “Photographers Create First Artworks in Google Street View” in Digital News: Photography Blog, October 29, 2013.
http://www.photographyblog.com/news/photographers_create_first_artworks_in_google_street_view/


Grgar, Sonja. “The grass is not greener on the other side: Surrey exhibition highlights the importance of local agriculture” in The Source  | Vol 13 – No 30 | October 8 – October 22, 2013
http://thelasource.com/en/2013/10/07/the-grass-is-not-greener-on-the-other-side-surrey-exhibition-highlights-the-importance-of-local-agriculture/


Hunter, Dorothy. " This one's for the Farmer' e-catalogue, Surrey Art Gallery, BC, Canada. 2013

Kimmett, Colleen. “Google Farm View: Artist Sylvia Grace Borda gives agrarian Surrey a techie treatment” in The Weekend Tyee, October 19, 2013. http://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2013/10/19/Google-Farm-View/

Laurence, Robin. “Fall arts preview: Sylvia Grace Borda finds art in farms and sequins” in the Georgia Straight Newspaper, Vancouver, September 11 -18, 2013.
http://www.straight.com/arts/421776/fall-arts-preview-sylvia-grace-borda-finds-art-farms-and-sequins


Stass, Joanna. “Photographer creates interactive Google Street View artwork,” in News: Photography for Beginners UK Blog, October 31, 2013,
http://www.photoforbeginners.com/news/news-features/photographers-create-google-street-view-artwork

 

The following videos are narrated by the artist and present an overview to how each of the FARM TABLEAUX: Surrey, BC projects was staged in Google Streetview:


The artist presents an overview to the Farm Tableaux project from its roots in Canada to its development in Finland. This interview forms part of an e-archive produced in June 2015 in tandem with the Mänttä Art Festival guest curated by Kalle Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger.

  • Mise en Scene
    • Mise en Scene
  • Farm Work
  • Farm Tableaux - Google Street View
  • Aerial Fields
  • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2020-21
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2017-19
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2013-14
    • Cameras and Watercolour Sunsets 2010-12
  • Interrogations of a Camera
  • This is not a camera
  • Impressions
  • Seeing Technologies
  • Northern Ireland
    • Coming to the Table
    • Orchards
  • Kissing Project
  • Past Projects
    • Public Art Commission: Number 4 Pump Station
    • Community Engagement: Seeing Across Boundaries
    • Public Art Commission: Cuneo Camera Obscura
  • Artist Bio
    • Artist Bio
    • Teaching Practice
    • Public Speaking
    • Request a lecture
    • Purchasing Art
  • Exhibition History
    • Exhibition History
    • Reviews
  • Contact
  • News
  • Camera Histories
  • Momento Mori
  • Stereoworks
    • Two if not Three
    • Aura
    • Viewpoints
    • This is not a camera
  • re-COLLECT-ing
  • EK Modernism
    • EK Modernism series
    • Project legacies
    • Canada series
  • A Holiday in Glenrothes
  • Every Bus Stop in Surrey, BC
  • This one's for the farmer
  • Social engagement
  • Lumsden Biscuit
    • Social Enterprise
    • Edible photograph
  • What are you doing Richmond
  • Snow Cameras
  • Hunting Cameras
  • Architecture
    • Architecture
    • Preplanning design
    • House as Social Agent
    • Generous Architecture
  • Digital Art
  • Shifting Perspectives Book