Jason Lewis
Words Found on an Empty Beach

Exhibition from March 24 until April 10, 2011
Opening: March 24 at 6:30pm
JASON LEWIS (Montreal)
Discussion between Steve Loft and Jason Lewis at 7:30 PM
At Artengine's M70 Lab
2 Daly Avenue, Ottawa

Creative computation is a material practice. What Jason Lewis can create is enabled and constrained by the programming language he use, the processor on which it is run and the screen through which it is viewed. His poetry writing is also an intensely material practice, in which he experiment with how the characteristics of computational media—dynamics, interactivity, data processing, and network awareness—affect the ways in which his words are read. And, of course, both programming and poetry are writing practices.

Words Found on an Empty Beach will employ a combination of large-scale touch screen interactives, mobile touch screen interactives, large-scale prints and micro-sculptures. It will incorporate a series of texts written expressly for each format, integrated through a thematic focus on how we use language to build the scaffolding on which we hang our understandings of the world.

Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media artist, poet and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects devising new means of creating and reading digital texts, developing systems for creative use of mobile technology, designing alternative interfaces for live performance, and using virtual environments to assist Aboriginal communities in preserving, interpreting and communicating cultural histories.

He co-founded and co-directs the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace research network that is investigating how Aboriginal people can participate in the shaping of our digital media future, and co-directs workshops combining traditional stories and game design.

Lewis is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, creative and technical levels simultaneously. His creative work has been featured at the Ars Electronica Center, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Urban Screens, Mobilefest and imagineNATIVE, among other venues; his writing about new media has been presented at conferences, festivals and exhibitions on four continents; and his work with Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace has won multiple awards.

Objet Indirect Object, a project deriving from the idea of materiality in media art, was born out of the curators, Steve Loft and Marie-Hélène Leblanc, putting their heads together in their wish to join the work of artists who explore the object and the material realm in their artistic approach. Initiated by DAÏMÕN, the project was spread over the course of more than a year in the form of a laboratory of artistic and technological experimentation. In addition, original work by artists from the region and the rest of Quebec and Canada is being shown not only at DAÏMÕN in Gatineau but also, thanks to invaluable partnerships, at AXENÉO7 in Gatineau and at Artengine and SAW Video in Ottawa. Exhibitions, screenings and performances will offer various interpretations of and perspectives on analogue creation, materiality and objects incorporated into or disincorporated from media art.