TBA:06 ON SIGHT

PHILIPPE BLANC & KATHERINE BOVEE

Desktop

As part of an ongoing collaboration, Desktop is a diorama of a virtual environment that pulls freely from the vocabularies of computer technology, new media, and contemporary art practice. Casting aside the modernist notions of technological innovation and progress, Desktop looks to the more quotidian confrontations between computer and user. During its nearly 30-year history, the personal computer has relied on a set of metaphorical equivalents to real-world forms and functions. Desktop considers how the pace of technological change and obsolescence bring about the potential for what the artists deem “micro-nostalgia.”

Desktop is presented in conjunction with laptop, (see page 074) a roving version installed in the mobile exhibition space, THE UNIT. Throughout the festival, laptop will travel to the tech hub of Beaverton and various locations around central Portland, including regular stops at The Works.

Blanc, a native of France, and Bovee are based in Portland. Bovee is also a writer and regular contributor to PORT, an art criticism blog. Their individual and collaborative work has been exhibited at apexart, motel gallery, Jeff Jahn’s Fresh Trouble and Contemporary Art Month in San Antonio.