About the exhibition

What is so new about “new media”? The original definition of “media” meant “material” (wood, bronze, ink, and so on). How ironic is it that new media (or digital media) is viewed as holding an immaterial existence? The digital image is “made” of light and a language of binary code, not ink and paper. But why is this shift towards immaterialism an important distinction between our original definitions of media? As printmakers, we know why the adoption of new forms of media marks important cultural shifts, having intimately studied the implications of the printing press. With the birth of print media, radical changes in fundamental concepts such as originality, ephemerality, identity, and time were forced to suit the existing media models. We are now once again faced with an epistemological and ontological crisis of the image in contemporary times.

Materials such as dust are known for their strong connection to the passage of time and human indexicality. However, through the works in this exhibition, many fundamental concepts of being are defamiliarized through subtle digital manipulations of familiar materials and surfaces.

About the artist

Alex Linfield is a multidisciplinary artist, newly based in Mohkinstsis/Calgary. Linfield holds an MFA from NSCAD University and a BFA from the University of Alberta.