Clemson artist/science geek Molly Morin operates in a still surfacing region of the art world where the Internet, science and arts overlap, offering no small amount of potential, or, in Morin’s case, a wealth of beauty and originality.
The myriad ways in which the Internet and digital realm can be tapped for more abstract artistic purposes has only recently been looked at by more than a few eyes, but Morin’s latest work in “Mapping (Internet Social Networks)” provides evidence an exciting new world may be opening up.
“There is certainly an emerging body of artists who are using industrial or digital materials,” she said “There are artists out there who are doing it but it’s still kind of a niche because people don’t have access to it.”
“It’s work that isn’t displayed in large galleries outside of big cities,” she added.
Her “Mapping (Internet Social Networks)” series is complex but simplistic at the same time. Students in the physics and packaging department help with the work, and Morin is in the process of ditching Illustrator in favor of writing code to “draw” the pieces.
But, on the series’ lighter end, students’ favorite movies, television programs and other faves listed on their Facebook profiles serve as guideposts while “mapping.”
Using her own account as a starting point in “Facebook Spiralgraph 2B,” she randomly chose the movie “Junebug” to begin the mapping. Twenty-nine profiles were connected via “Junebug”, so a 29 sided ring was drawn. From a connected profile, Morin then clicked on the movie “Secretary”, which had 203 people connected, and 29, 203-sided rings were placed around the original ring. The next movie selected, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” had 364 profiles connected, so 364-sided rings were then placed around each 203-sided ring.
The result — not looking unlike a spectacular session with a spiralgraph — is fascinating visually and in the concept. Since a graphing system is arranged beforehand, manipulation is mostly limited to selecting colors and deciding if a given sequence is too boring.
In another series, Morin is working on a project called “the escape game,” in which she clicks her way out of a Web site, recording how many links it takes to accomplish the task. If, for example, it takes two clicks on the first site, she draws a line two inches to the right. If the second site requires five clicks, she takes a 90-degree right turn and draws for five inches. The next site may take three clicks, so she would take another right turn and draws a line three inches in length, and so on.
The results she described as looking like “funnel clouds, or a sort of tornado where there’s a lot of activity concentrated at the origin, and kind of spread out at the edge.”
Conceptually, Morin is breaking new ground, which wasn’t necessarily her intention when she set out.
“I think it’s interesting for me to kind of strive for originality,” she explained. “It’s not that it’s better or important, but experimenting with materials and methods of making work is fun.”
So far “fun” isn’t the word some have used to describe her work. She said the pieces are sometimes met with a degree of skepticism, which she attributes to a lack of understanding, and finds this reaction sometimes helpful.
“It’s useful and healthy to explain it to an audience that’s not sensitive to it already,” she said. “You have to be able to communicate it to a broader audience, but it’s kind of an uphill battle at times.”
Morin currently has work up at the Pickens County Art Museum, and will put pieces from her “Mapping (Internet Social Networks)” up at a grad exhibit at the Lee Gallery later in the year.
