Rebecca Peel BFA Thesis Fall 2012
The objects, ideals, and global shifts most tenacious in contemporary human society proceed from a lineage of advancements rooted in natural adaptation and evolution but which are imbued with fantasy and utopia. As proponents and subjects of the same enduring processes that we are so enamored by, humans seek to grasp and reconfigure the immaculate coalescence between raw, untouched energy that must occupy space and time beyond understanding, and what exists now: products that have undergone intense compression and shaping by enigmatic laws of nature and physics. In doing so, we’ve established a modus operandi that mimics biological models but at some point diverts from an evolutionary archetype and thus beholds unique systemic strategies: those that reflect a patently human perspective. A formal inquiry of materials coupled with active technology and a spectrum of semi-familiar objects provides broad survey to explore relationships across technology and biology, techno-utopian ideals, psychoanalysis and movement of form. The work aims to capture essential instances of symmetry between the real, pre-existing defaults into which our fantasies and dynamic creations are born and the equivocal ideal that fuels both metaphysical longing and technological momentum.