J. Sybylla Smith, In Conversation with Tabitha Soren

Episode #38, Summary

Episode Summary

Tabitha Soren’s visual alchemy explores the dynamic and reciprocal impact between human touch and technology.

Episode Notes 

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 discusses, among other things:

  • Creating images that have not been seen before

  • Researching ideas as entry points to 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 

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J. Sybylla Smith, In Conversation with Teju Cole

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J. Sybylla Smith, In Conversation with Rich-Joseph Facun