[-empyre-] introducing Tina Gonsalves on "Bare Life"

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

dear -empyreans-


Joining Michelle White, please welcome Tina Gonsalves (AU).




Gonsalves’ (http://www.tinagonsalves.com) creative investigation  
integrates Art, Science and Technology. For over a decade she has  
used video, painting, animation and interactivity to explore complex  
emotional landscapes. Rich, painterly video abstractions create  
emotionally potent narratives that often seduce or repel the viewer.  
Converging science and art, she attempts to enrich the public  
understanding of the hidden emotional language of the body.  
Converging technology and video, she creates embodied interactive  
audiovisual experiences, discovering new ways of experiencing the  
internal body and the external environments.

The theme; 'externalising the internal - revealing what lay beneath  
the skin', has threaded Gonsalves’ artistic investigations.  From  
1995 to 2001, Gonsalves worked with diagnostic imaging departments of  
hospitals within Australia, gaining access to diagnostic imaging  
machines and resulting imagery. Her work evolved over this period  
from interpretative representations of the body using diagnostic  
imaging to exploring complex emotional landscapes using moving  
imagery and sound. She \ created many short single channel films that  
examined emotional states and emotional contagion. She aspired to  
show people in the throws of emotion, at times using her own body and  
emotional experiences as the catalyst for the work. This resulted in  
intimate works that were screened, televised and exhibited  
extensively internationally.

In 2002, Gonsalves pursued research to explore how her artwork could  
probe the audiences' emotional body. She investigated the use of bio- 
metric sensors as triggers for emotional video narratives, leading to  
both more immersive installations, as well as intimate ubiquitous  
works. Gonsalves’ work in mobile and wearable technology investigates  
ways of using these technologies to creating new, more empathic  
social interactions. Her projects often attempt to disrupt codes of  
social behaviours, with an agenda to create more intimate and  
‘authentic’ communication between each other (“Medulla Intimata”  
2004; collaborator Tom Donsaldson, “Tryst “2006/2007). She sees  
mobile technology as a vehicle for the dissolution of the barriers  
between art, the social and the environmental, creating new art  
experiences integrated into everyday life.

Searching for more empirical foundations to the emotional cues that  
drive her work,  she initiated a collaboration with affective  
neuroscientist, Dr. Hugo Critchley. Wth Dr. Crtichley, Gonsalves was  
awarded an AHRC/Ace arts and science fellowship. Currently, through  
her role as Artist in Resident at the Institute of Cognitive  
Neuroscience, she is investigating the mechanisms through which  
emotions are triggered and shaped. Critchley and Gonsalves are  
discerning the physiological signatures of emotional states to create  
software and artwork that recognize and respond to internal emotions .


Gonsalves work has been screened and exhibited extensively  
internationally including  the Banff Centre for the Arts, Siggraph,  
USA; ISEA 2004; European Media Arts Festival 1997-2006; Artsway, UK;   
IAMAS, Japan; The Australian Centre For Photography, Sydney;  
Barbican, UK; Pompidou Centre, France; DEAF 2004, ICA, London and  
ACMI, Australia.

She has taken part in many Artist in Residence programs including The  
Banff New Media Institute in Canada, the Centre for Contemporary Art  
in Prague, Asialink artist in residence at the New Media faculty  
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, (Pro) duction residency at  
Artsway and the Advanced Institute of Media Arts and Sciences  
residency in Japan.

Her music videos for labels Universal, BMG, EMI, and Festival  
Mushroom Records have been frequently televised worldwide.

Tina’s single channel video is represented exclusively by Novamedia  
Arts, and 2D prints are represented by the Helen Gory Galerie in  
Melbourne, Australia.


 -cm