“Liminal” was created for the Press Play Augmented Reality Undergraduate Research Stream of the AMP Lab at UBCO, with audio by Kai Hagen. It will be on display for one year on the Art Walk near the Rotary Centre in Kelowna, and the animation can be viewed using the Artivive app.
Inspired by Fred Wah’s reflections on the interconnectedness of technology and nature, my work draws from Wah’s poem “We Are Different” and his archival audio recordings, which discuss his inseparability from technology, particularly recording devices like the reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The textures were curated to reflect the merging of nature and technology; for example, the textures on the turtle were primarily images of a reel-to-reel tape collaged with images of tree bark and snow. I sourced textures from British Columbia that were relevant to Fred Wah; for example, Wah is an avid downhill skier, so I chose to incorporate textures of ski poles, snow, and tree bark while also incorporating textures from Spanish Banks Beach, which he discusses in one of his recordings. Additionally, I’ve integrated Fred Wah’s handwritten annotations from a poetry list on the back of an archival reel-to-reel tape.
