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I I U m I n a t e d a n u sc r i p My work is primarily concerned with investigating the notion of privacy. As ADGE GLEESON our daily lives transect an increasingly wired infrastructure, we are giving up ser print on My~lar greater and greater pieces of ourselves to the public record. Iserprint on Mylar In Artist's Garden, I have bar-coded a leaf and presented it, insectlike, in a 96 flat box alluding to a childhood go-cart. The suggestion is that it is has been collected, catalogued, and tracked and is probably about to be marketed in some way. I selected a fallen leaf because it is one of the few things left in our society that is perceived as free for the taking. Bar codes are our culture's off-Net magic cookies-like those small data files that some Web sites stash on your hard drive, often without your knowledge, they collect information hidden from the viewer and are so ubiquitous that they are now largely unseen. They are just so much decoration to the consumer who cannot read them, but they are more than just an efficiency device. The value and accessibility of information evolves and sometimes inverts over time. In Illuminated Manuscript, I have scanned and corrupted ... t the text of a fragment of newspaper-specifically, the stock page-and then attempted to give it something of the aura of a cherished codex page :: with gold as its background and an imaginary electric security system pro- 0Ii tecting it. Like the 14th century manuscript that was undecipherable to the largely illiterate population, these easily recognizable numerical columns -a nonetheless carry a deeper agenda. The relentless collection and processing of data, which might seem a 'tS relatively innocent task, has led us to a point where our every keystroke is i transparent to someone else, should they care to observe. While we nostalgically turn back the fashion clock to a 1970s Marsha Brady look, no one is .. proposing a return to the penciled price tag. IIE & Il I think about the disjunctures that occur in our lives. Someone being transplanted from one culture U ni 1 I I to another; the disintegration of an intimate relationship between two people; certain cells in the body REET K. mutating and manifesting as cancer-all are situations in which a disjuncture has occurred. Somewhere Cactus the relationship between two or more variables has changed, and things are never the same again. What I look for in making art is the smallest component of such situations-the fragment from which the whole can be reconstructed. Like an archeologist rebuilding a dinosaur from a few small bones, I look at these small pieces from all sides, physically and perceptually. But the difference is that I re-create my small pieces over jH I I ~ and over again from memory, each time making them slightly different. In some instances, ; ~iJm l;^^^^^^^^ ~~~~~they mirror the dividing and differentiation of cells to build a body. And I make them much larger than life, so that their physical presence overshadows my own and they : : :-::: .....e become an ambient space in which I can wander. I use them to fill gaps in my memory; r : r..;.F .:.: they are a new body of information that will allow me understand the situation. F - , ............. :M. My current work is based on the formation of a malignant glioblastoma, a tumor that i: i:-;.: ' :: _ manifests itself in the brain. Using digital methods, I combine traditional paintings with ...:' *magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain and its cell structure and patterns to map the growth of an otherwise unseen tumor. In particular, I have focused on the area of the brain that controls speech and language abilities. Some of the pieces in this series illustrate the relationship between tumors and language; some illustrate the changes in the tumor itself; and some illustrate thought wave functions. I chose the Cactus printing method because it uses an electrostatic charge to make the toner pigments adhere to the A paper, a process that references the electrical activity that takes place in the brain. ed DAS print...