Hard Material

About:

Hard Material began as an assignment in my Intermedia II class at the University of Iowa. The assignment was to make a map, and with my project I hoped to trace the movement of virtual media into the physical world. Porn interests me in particular because the Internet has lessened the demand for it as a tangible good: one no longer needs to purchase, transport, hide, or destroy it.

Yet physical interaction is what I believe is necessary to confront a social taboo.

By tracing videos directly from my computer screen, I both reclaim pornography as physical and turn the viewing of explicit material into an intimate experience. The original tracings are therefore precious to me, but the copies I make and distribute are free to be altered and reproduced without limit. Each generation loses its connection to the author and to those that profit from it.

These tracings are not meant to viewed on a computer screen: each one lives and develops as a physical thing. This blog serves as an archive of the original templates and the new works created from them.

I encourage you to print them off, to share them, to mess them up, and to re-submit them here, adding your work to the growing collective of hard material.

Hard Material

10.12.11

Elsewhere @PS1

5.12.11

Intermedia Open House 2011

3.12.11