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Cate Levin
Relief Printmaking
Theme

I would like to use the freedom we have in this class to choose our own topic to discover, in depth, the potential of a theme I have been working with over the summer which is the apparent takeover of technology in modern times. I have been exploring the changing role of human connections in this technology driven society. Although I hate to use computers and I would much prefer to talk with someone in person rather than on the phone, I do love to draw these machines. I’m interested in there extremely ordered buttons and keys and there straight lines. I am especially interested in these forms when they are examined alongside and contrasted with extremely organic shapes of living things, especially people and animals.
In all of these pieces I have been taking images of phones and computers and putting scenes of life on their screens. In some of these works I have been exploring the isolating side of the technological revolution, and in other works I examine the ways in which they help to connect us.
These modern machines allow us to speak to one another without being anywhere near each other and to be able to get live stream videos of events actually occurring sent to a screen which we can watch. As nice as this can be it also separates people from people and events. So although someone can watch documentation of an occurrence that person cannot really take part in the action at hand.
I try to make my pieces of art reflect the limits of this type of “participation.” These days technology is allowing people to make the most intimate of connections through technology. Some people have sex exclusively over the internet or phone. These types of situations but disgust and awe me. I would love to explore these themes which are so imbedded in the culture I live in as the theme of my artistic focus this semester.