Kristin Lucas investigates visions of the future, the physical and psychological effects of an accumulation of rapid spread, flash-in-the-pan technology, and the impact of the digital medium on perceptions of time and space. She uses her camera as a diaristic device, into which she unloads her anecdotal, performative mini-dramas. Her work resonates with a sense of social isolation and alienation from the computer/television/electronic media that she posits as a surrogate for personal interaction. The backdrop to Lucas’ work is the empty world of day-time television, cable shopping channels and shopping malls.

Since the late 90s, Lucas has been incorporating gaming scenarios and sci-fi references into video, drawing, photography, web and sculptural works that humorously portray anxieties over the franchising of experience and the influence of control systems on behavior. The subject portrayed in her work is explicitly gendered and this is significant given the recent emergence of an 8-bit ‘scene,’ of which Lucas is a precursor. While very clearly informed by an interest in and knowledge of information technologies, Lucas’ work departs from the idea that an intuitive and imaginative space of play still exists even as it is constantly being mediated and negotiated.

The current exhibition includes previous and new work including video, photographs, poetry, and sculptural constructions. Involuntary Reception is a monologue of a woman self-marginalized from society because she has been inflicted with an EPF (electromagnetic pulse field) that destroys hard drives, kills family pets, and makes leisure activities like swimming potentially fatal to those around her. Magic Eyes Cream Sandwich is a three channel video installation made on the occasion of an anniversary celebration for the artist’s arms, one real and the other cyber. Lo-Fi Green Sigh was shot on location at Biosphere 2 and employs the visual language of B movie sci-fi thrillers against the backdrop of the site’s retro-futuristic architecture; it provides something like the soundtrack for the exhibition. Other works include images from her Face Series, a poem from Decryption Poetry made from corporate annual reports downloaded off of the internet, and a series of portable transference stations made from an array of disposed and dated consumer objects found during meticulous expeditions to local thrift stores.