​Mutual interviews by the artists

Fion's questions to Mei-Tsen 
Fion -Tell me about how the Boundless worlds in flux project connects with your practice?
Mei-Tsen -It was a good challenge! As artists we generally work on our own, we have our idea, we try to develop it ourselves and then create the work. It is a solitary process. Boundless has opened up another horizon for me, working with different artists of different ages from different cultures with different points of view, perceptions and personal lives. This has enriched my concepts and I hope that the project will continue. We’ve been questioning each other and it is interesting to learn about other artists’ processes, because process is often the most fascinating aspect of creation. At the outset of the project we had one or 2 ideas, the parameters were not fixed, collaborating and contributing more ideas over time has grown and enriched our vision.

Fion - When you speak of the aesthetic of displacement what does that mean? How does this affect the way in which you create?
Mei-Tsen - I think for my definition the aesthetic of displacement is like cartography - a physical, neurological and psychological map. Within this map we travel as though through a web from any point on any line to another. My artworks with city maps and trees work in this way, it’s a kind of visual flux, these are weblike map, not linear and they imply 3 dimensionality. The viewer can travel within the painting, investigating the work like a journey through a labyrinth. I’ve had feedback from viewers of my work describing how they enjoy this kind of journeying, entering and finding their own pathways through the paintings. This movement reveals the cartography, the passage of time and the emotions within the work.

Fion - Why is metaphor important in your work?
Mei-Tsen - Metaphor and also I would use the word analogy to describe what I am doing. I feel that our human lives are analogous to the lives of jellyfish, the relationship of the human ecosystem for my personal research observing nature and understanding where the ‘right’ place for human beings lies, what is our interaction with other living beings, how we live together, where can we find a harmonious way to live together on the planet. This is what we see in mythological narratives and imagery also, ways of inhabiting other life forms in our imaginations where for example I could be a jellyfish, a tree. We imagine another way of being in order to develop new perceptions and perspectives on our place in the universe.

Fion - What draws you to immersive technologies?
Mei-Tsen - I had never tried this technology before, I like the challenge of using different materials which changes our entry point into the creative process. At the moment, I know very little, but I am trying to learn more, I don’t have much personal control, I need to work with other people. This does create a space for a new approach, one that is not familiar. I want to control this new experience, but it is interesting also to have no control. I am trying to find equilibrium between these poles. It is good to be lost sometimes when encountering a new city, new country, a different culture and language. So for me this is a journey in a new land. I’m waiting to see what happens.

Mei-Tsen’s questions for Fion
Mei-Tsen- In your paintings You use collage from books and magazines, storytelling, literary references, adventure stories from childhood using personal and societal narratives can you describe how in this immersive world working with many other artists, how do you construct your own personal story? how do you organise all of these elements together from different sources to create new meanings?
Fion - In a way even though the technology is different I am using a similar methodology in my work using Tiltbrush and the other digital technologies because I tend to stitch things together. So my creations in VR include 3D models I’ve imported, some of these I’ve made myself and some have been made by other people, then I add to them, I transform them, I do things to them. Equally, the way I use the brushes, a lot of people use them as a painterly medium and I tend to use them more as a sculptural medium. I really enjoy the sense of theatricality and movement that I can access in immersive technology, that movement I can only hint at when I make 2D or 3D work I can explore much more fully – the dynamic of movement because one is introducing the element of time.
When you mentioned about the story telling aspect of what I do – the multiple stories that are unfolding, there’s the historic element the wider global dimension and then there are the personal stories and how they weave together. So in the collage work that I make, there’s an implication of the passage of time and the movement of time and I find that I can work with that really well using immersive technology. I think that in terms of how the collaboration works, what I enjoy, and this is where my curatorial interests are evident, is finding the connections and pathways between the works of very different artists. I think that this speaks to the viewer, it speaks to inclusivity and it speaks to having a much wider reach. It is also paying respect to the other artists because they are creating their own worlds, they can refer to other worlds if they want and you can find a way of having those artists worlds speak to one another. That act of creating visual dialogue really welcomes to viewer and the artists as well. As you’ve said, it’s really interesting to see other artists’ processes which may be very different from our own. So I don’t see any disconnect between my work in more traditional media and immersive media, the same ideas and methodologies that excite me.

Mei-Tsen - What I understand from your work and my interpretation of it leads me to think you like to create a patchwork, to make a kind of jigsaw puzzle both in your own work and in the way you create. You like to weave al these ideas and stories together and in the end we have something that makes sense.
Fion - Yes, that’s exactly right, it’s like making a 4 dimensional quilt because there’s the element of time and travel which run through and it is very theatrical, immersive technology brings in sound, movement, lighting, staging, all the other media as well.

Mei-Tsen - I am very concerned with ecology, what are your views about how we live on this planet, with this pandemic? We have had this terrible lesson with Covid19 so how do we change things? I’m not saying that it’s just about repairing the planet because it’s about our very survival. Trees have survived for millions of years without human beings but we have an existential threat. As artists, how do you think we should act? Should we use our work to raise these issues?
Fion - I think that this is a really important point because I do think artists have to be activists as well. We have to be aware of the world around us and try to do things for good. However one of the dangerous aspects of any kind of movement, be it for or against any particular thing is that the arguments become very devisive. People say we have to prioritise nature over people or people over the economy or the economy over people and present constant discordant views whereas I think that everything connects. If we have better societies for people, people will behave better to their world because we would have a raised sense of empathy, a willingness to share and to work together. We’ve got to work collaboratively as a human race. Like with the vaccine, we can’t just vaccinate everyone in the
developed world and neglect everyone else because it will come back on us anyway. These are very pragmatic ways forward. So I think that when we’re making an artwork in the way we are, we can highlight all these issues. WE can welcome the viewer in and they can go away afterwards without having been battered with political arguments but leave with greater feeling.

Mei-Tsen - Yes we need to touch people emotionally not just have a political argument, people get tired of this. As artists we can contribute something fresh
Fion - Also it would be nice if people went away with some sense of transformed awareness. I remember David Attenborough talking about how his series Blue Planet really did make many people aware of the ecological impact of plastic on our oceans. That’s a wonderful thing to have done and I think that art can do this as well.

Mei-Tsen - I have another question – as the curator of this project Boundless, how are you going to reach viewers who are not interested in technology? How are you going to attract them to engage with an artwork created in VR, to visit our online platform? A lot of people don’t want to engage with new technologies so how can we transform their opinion? There is a real gap between online communities using VR/ AR who are on Instagram etc and those communities who never play video games, don’t use social media, people who just want to take a walk in the forest, be in nature. How can we interest people like that in our project?
Fion - I think that we have to look at what people want to look at, film and tv have a wide appeal for people of all ages, all backgrounds, abilities and interests. In every country in the world where people are introduced to a screen with moving images, they like it. Immersive technologies take people a step further. However I think that our project can exist on all those levels. When we have finished making our immersive artwork the one in which people can navigate and interact, there is no reason why we can’t also film it. We can make it available as a film and if someone sees it and likes it, we can let them know that they can visit the film, enter it and choose how they move around it. Also we must make it simple, not complicated, it’s great if someone has a headset and they can view it like that but a lot of people won’t ever have a headset, certainly at the moment…

Mei-Tsen - And it’s not comfortable!
Fion - Yes, but they can still experience something of those feelings and sensations on a screen and if we make the interaction really easy to use and if they have something great to take away afterwards – a memory, a snapshot that would be the way to do it.
I’ve also been thinking of an idea – in language learning it’s called task listening, particularly effective with beginners where they have to listen to say, 2-3 minutes of announcements and they have to find the information they need. I’ve mentioned this to Maureen and am going to introduce it into my own practice as well. It may not be so interesting for older adults, but it will be for younger people, so they will have a series of questions either before or after visiting the artwork and try to discover the answers in the course of the visit, a sort of quiz in effect. I do think that we’ve got to be playful, we have to think about what are the things we like ourselves, what are the things that people feed back to us, what do they like. Often, it’s a question of presentation, whatever an artwork is like there will be someone out there who likes it and others who don’t, so the curatorial role is to present every artwork in a way that it speaks to the widest audience possible, it’s a kind of democratisation of the experience.

Mei-Tsen - At the same time, we need to find our own original voice, the message we want to transmit
Fion - Yes and as we explore and work together I don’t think that we have to worry about the originality of our voice, I think that will come automatically. We have worked on this on all different levels and it’s not the technology that will seduce people, it’s the feelings and ideas that will do this.

Mei-Tsen - So we need to make our platform simple to use or to play as possible
Fion - And also diverse so we have the interactive platform, film, different ways of connecting
Mei-Tsen Yes and I think when it’s possible we can make different kinds of site specific projections where the viewer can be physically inside the immersive space – so our project could be in a museum with our artists’ environments in different galleries.
And if we held the Boundless project in different countries it would alter and respond to each location
It will also be much easier to install our Boundless installation in museums and galleries because the technology is much easier to transport than physical art works. This is a really strong point

Fion - It could be the visitors, local partner groups who make the physical artifacts to add into the exhibition/installation and this is where the co-creative and generative elements of our project will add authentic local dimensions.

Maureen’s questions to Fion

Maureen - what is different about the Immersive platform?
Fion - In my current work - I am creating multimedia collage, stitching together – seemingly unrelated things except that these are connected when we view the nature of our world, our existence, our universe as being interconnected. The rationale is not linear and it works in a 4 dimensional way. What I love about immersive technology is that I can work in time as well. The passage of time is not just implied or encapsulated as it is in my 2/3D work, it is actual. Combining technologies and finding workaround solutions is an immensely engaging, if challenging process. When I work in this way using 3D artefacts I create myself, importing those created by others which I can then remix and alter and expand on, I am making a truly dynamic and inclusive collage. Creating in the virtual space, I am working with time and movement also and this is very much part of the ‘theatrical’ aspect of my practice and it is closely linked to my curatorial approach. So for example, I have created a complex densely forested space where I can explore and navigate different pathways and even get lost in it. 
I have made this forest space which speaks to my artistic practice as an installation and performance artist.  I have an immersive environment where I can try out everything. I am not working in a controlling way, rather in an experimental way, allowing for improvisation and open-ended experiences.

Maureen - What is the relationship with other users?
Fion - I feel deeply that we need to welcome users into the space at some level.  I don’t want viewers/visitors to feel threatened, alienated or just unmoved. Metaphorically my approach is one where you can offer viewers ‘a cuppa’ – Matisse described this as an ‘easy chair’ ( Matisse 190)
The welcome aspect is most important because after that, we may want to present challenging or difficult narratives and so we would wish them to engage deeply, to empathise, to experience a certain catharsis.

In my personal Boundless space,  there is a corridor for the viewer to navigate, fish swimming underneath and an end wall where there are four pathways to choose from. In many ways, these pathways start and end in the same place - travelling through a multi-cursive maze. So, the rules of the game in my world include; experimentation with pathways, staying with them or leaving them. Visitors can discover and listen to a specific soundtrack, they can pick up part of a coil to create their own artifact in the participant space, they can take a fish or jellyfish with them on their travels. There are photo opportunities for people to take a selfie with the young girl avatar riding on a magic carpet, to play with scale like Alice in Wonderland. I know that this is something visitors really enjoy, having seen how workshop participants at Tate Exchange Liverpool (during my 2019 interactive exhibition Odyssey: Explorations)  were fascinated by contributing to the exhibition itself with physical artifacts they made while simultaneously being introduced to the Qlone app which allowed them to scan those artifacts and access them in AR.

Art can offer the user/ audience - ‘head space’ to encourage the imagination. Those surreal juxtapositions often make sense on an emotional and aesthetic level. We like certain things - but why? Whether that’s about patterns or colours or shapes, these sensory attractions usually go back to our childhood, we underestimate our memories, our sensory states and their impact on us. Discovering the immersive as a creative artist, brought me back to that quality of early childhood experience. 
For our visitors, who may be entering an immersive experience for the first time - I want to keep the freshness and the immediacy of this first encounter. 

Maureen - In terms of collage - what is possible within the Immersive? What determines the juxtaposition of objects? 
Fion - When I started using Tilt Brush, I just worked intuitively, Sean Rodrigo, my trainer and mentor encouraged me to experiment. So I tried everything – I wanted to know if and how I could import a 3D model, what format did I need and once I understood this then I worked out ways that I could change that model, add to it and embed it. I can create sculptural, 3d collage - it is the same as the artist working with found objects and transforming them, that is a big part of my practice. There are connections to Surrealism in what I do, centered on the transformative, rather than the illustrative potential and a recognition of the power of the uncanny. 
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The technical barriers I came across frequently don’t discourage me, I try to find ways around them. Workaround is my middle name. Because I had no background in immersive technology, I did not know what I couldn’t do and I was not fazed by obstacles. I would ask if this does not work, what else can I do to achieve my goal? and maybe that goal will need to change a bit too.
I hope that the users will feel something of my excitement working in the Immersive world. It is different from the gaming world experience - there is not a competitive, goal orientated format. Instead, there is a navigational structure which allows for open ended experience. My purpose is to create an visual/aural immersive encounter in a sense - an immersive poetic experience. When we read poetry, with its musicality, its rhythms and its rhyming - it sticks with us that’s why it is such a fundamental part of our global oral traditions. I hope to make sticky immersive, multimedia poetry . 
This aspiration resonates with the features and functions included in the artwork: droppable, collectable, stickable assets.

Fion's questions to Maureen
Fion - You speak of becoming a witness of being a witness, as a creative artist how do you explore this on your work? How do you demonstrate that witnessing? 
Maureen - In traditional storytelling, there is a crisis, a disruption in the world order whether man-made war or environmental disaster, a journey is undertaken to re-establish harmony and safety. The characters are a representation of human selves, the story seen through the human experience, travelling through environments, landscapes and interiors. The significant props, both sacred and profane, are transportation vehicles, protective clothes for exploration; and tools and technologies for hunting, gathering and storage. Then there are religious talismans and poetic texts which embed sacred human conversations with consciousness, conscience and ethics. Within this narrative journey, the community, family and tribe needs to be re-formed, rejuvenated. Who is the witness?  I am conscious of different witnesses, such as animals, plants, humans and spirits. As humans, we create narratives and compositions using our internal witness and editor - this is our consciousness. As humans, we may create an authorial omnipotent or critical voice. As humans, we may be aware of the witness that meditates, reflects, and holds the narrative without judgement. Khora - as discussed by Plato, Kristeva, Derrida and cultural theorists - suggests a wavering space that opens up an experience which is neither bound by a logic of exclusion nor that of participation. My art practice, as in cultural traditions, focuses on these acts of witnessing, allowing a mingling of heaven and earth, asking the big questions with a small word: why?
Fion - You ask visitors to collect traces, remnants and memory triggers in your artists space - do you guide the viewer? How do you do this? 
Maureen - The interactivity will allow design functions for visitors to 'reframe' their memories, to engage with our spaces by choosing collectibles the artist shares. The user journey will then allow them to enter into the participants' space where they can use them to co-create their unique Art Objects. Our current design of the participants' space is that of a 'forest of transformation' where visitors can create, alter and add to the environment. They can leave a mark, tell their story and come away with a digital artifact.
Fion - As a connector of other people and ideas what are the joys for you in doing this? Is this linked with your interest in immersive technologies? 
Maureen -  
My art practice and projects develop these common values: people, participation and platforms. We are all, people migrating from layers of trauma, adapting to survive in unfamiliar territory. We may have the capacity to open up deep wells of forgotten emotion. We long for connection, adventure and exploration, yet we sense danger, fear, loss and displacement. In our longing for family, roots and community there is an urge for a shared language. Today we share this felt experience using blended channels of online, physical face to face and immersive story-telling.

Fion's questions for Terri

Fion - What inspired you to create your artist’s world? Why fish?
Terri - I guess for a number of reasons, firstly I wanted to use the idea of fish predating on other fish a metaphor for the competitive man eat man world and secondly I’m a pescatarian, for health reasons and I wanted to investigate the cycle of nutrition involved.
 
Fion - Yes and these are the obvious messages the viewer can get from visiting the space but I’d like to push you further and ask about other thoughts or feelings which were running through your head while making it?
Terri - There was a seminal time when I visited Japan a number of years ago, I was very struck by the dietary patterns there. Fish, meat and rice were cheap to buy but fruit and vegetables were really expensive, as a visitor you are really struck by this and wonder about the implications not just on health but on the impacts at a planetary level.

Fion - In your own background do you find any parallels with Jamaican dietary practice?
Terri - In Jamaica people tend to eat meat rather than fish except for Rastas who tend to be vegetarian or pescatarian and that’s for religious reasons.
Fion - So, do you think that there’s an association between eating fish with fasting & abstinence? This is a common association in Ireland also.
Terri - Yes definitely, it’s not just about the availability of fish protein for island people it’s also about culture and habit.

Fion -  Beyond the theme of your work tell me about the first time you really looked at fish and thought about them?
Terri - That would have to be when I went swimming as a child, I only did this when travelling because my mother was very insistent that I needed to learn how to swim. We had a trip to Egypt and I went snorkelling in the red sea. On the one hand it was a scary experience because I was really aware of how deep the water was, however it was also magical to see the multicoloured shoals of fish, to having little turtles swimming alongside. That experience will always stay with me and I guess explains why my artist’s world is an underwater one.

​Terri's questions to Fion 
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Terri - What does migration mean to you?  
Fion - Like most Irish people it's the story of my family over centuries and also my own experience of life. I left my hometown Cork at age 21 and have never lived there since, unemployment was extremely high and opportunities for artists were incredibly limited - especially those who were women. First I went to France and lived in Nancy for four years and then I came to London where I have lived and worked ever since. In 2003 I went to China for the first time and until COVID I have spent 1-2 months every year, working on cross-cultural arts projects and exhibitions. I also spend a couple of months in France every year for family and work reasons. I think of my great grandfather's experience, commuting between Cork, where he worked as a boat builder and New York where he worked as a set builder on Broadway for 6 months of the year. I share with him that ongoing 'displacement'  and probably a sense of always being an outsider at some level. I embrace that - I accept the uncertainty and I welcome the opportunity for transformation, maybe it's a helpful way to navigate life.

Terri- What was the story behind the Woman on the bridge in your VR artwork? 
Fion - This was inspired by an ancient Irish narrative about a salmon who was endowed with great wisdom, what happened to the man who tried to get that wisdom, who ended up with it and what that meant. I've changed it from the original a bit where every 'actor' in the story is male and retold it in my own words - my salmon is a female!
Maybe our Boundless spaces share imagery for a reason.

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