Using an 8x10 large format camera, an iPad, images sourced from internet searches, social media and text messages, Surface Tension animates our layered relationship with technology. In thirty six high gloss images she reveals, reflects and ponders the complex layers between real life and our virtual one. 

In this conversation, Tabitha Soren discusses, among other things:

Creating images that have not been seen before

Researching ideas to find entry points and build context

Experimenting to fInd the tools that meet the job

VIsualizing the unseen impact of technology on psychological states

Layering intentions 

Best practices when using appropriated images

Thinking of a book and exhibit simultaneously 

Viewers keen reading of your image 

Social critic Jia Tolentino’s insightful book essay

Uncertainty as a place of hope

Publishers who honor your intention

Referenced in the episode

E.M. Forster - The Machine Stops

Alexis L. Boylan - Visual Culture

Surgeon general warns misinformation an ‘urgent threat’ to public health

Annie Murphy Paul - The Extended Mind 

The Ezra Klein podcast 

Nicholas Mirzoeff - The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality

Saidiya Hartman

Allen deSouza - How Art Can Be Thought: A Handbook for Change

Tabitha Soren's Fantasy Life is an Intimate Portrait of Baseball

Yoffy Press - TRACE; a Yoffy Press Triptych featuring Kota Ezawa, Tabitha Soren and Penelope Umbrico

Sharon Olds - For You 

Tabitha Soren Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith

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