about:
Fiona Bowie, interdisciplinary artist, musician/songwriter,
Professor Emerita, Emily Carr University


(she/her) (we/us), b. K'emk'emeláy̓ (Vancouver); variously employs photography,
film, video and sound to create immersive gallery installations, evolving public artworks and web-based artworks that center on subjects related to
socialinterequity and interconnectivity with other life forms.

Bowie identifies as a multi-spēcial, intermolecular being (a principle of physics, motivated by compassion) to draw attention to and popularize the
fact that on a quantum scale, there is structurally no separation between us and everything else in existence; yet earth's dominant cutlures are
antithetical to that. Her work and activism draws attention to and challenges ubiquitous narratives of heirarchy, for example, how hegemony molds
subjectivities as detached, generally ambivelant to unfamiliars and other life forms.

The artworks structurally manifest their subjects/content: Bowie designs unique image systems for each work. Gallery installations are projected
by the artist's own designed and fabricated projectors; each is unique to the particular context. These lightweight, diminutive 360° or omni-directional
projectors produce immersive spaces, while employing as little material as possible to fabricate them ( swell,faltering repetition, Slip/host, and others).
Additionally, due to these work's individualized mechanisms and optics, their dimensions are variable, fitting into various dimensions of space in which they
may be installed.
The impetus for creating these image machines stem from the fact that there are no commercially available technology that can create the realms
key to relay the particular content. While the early works were conceived at a time when the only omni or 360°e projectors were million dollar
systems for Planetariums and while keystoning of multiple, ganged market projectors allowed for seamless 360°e installations, they lack the
elasticuty that Bowie's bespoke projector bodies enable.

In the public realm:

City of Vancouver commissioned the award winning public artwork Flow, a bank of thousandfold images were shot by Bowie over 4 years (many backgrounds and portraits
including locals of 1 Kingsway, artists in the area, and birds and animals). The collaboration with computer scientists Sidney Fels
and Morgan Hibert, resulted in (customized open source) software to run the work 24 hours a day, 360 days a year. This coding allowed images to constantly
evolve in scale and content. The work, installed at 1 Kingsway in a 30 x13 foot bank of window panes, operated for 13 years until the two 20,000 lumens
projectors became unrepairable. The software is still running. This work projected its mis-en-scene, combining various foregrounds and backgrounds evolved
in presence and scale of subject, changing scenes every 2 minutes over its 13 year installation period.

Surface, was another commission by the City of Vancouver, was one of 6 artist initiated projects for 2010 Mapping and Marking, where
artists submitted proposals for their projects set in, and integral to locations of their own choosing. Surface was a 24/7, 365day (3 years) "documentary
of the undersea life of False Creek. With a camera mounted under the ferry Aquabus, utilizing a number of radio relay system dotted along False Creek and utilizing
LiveCasts powerful live video capabilities, people were able to witness the underwater life live via a screen on the ferry, a large LED cinema screen mounted on a
silo at Ocean Concrete and several monitors located at community centers and Science world, simulatiously available on the Surface website any time of day or night
all over the globe.

Shadoworks are created by using screen grabs from Google Earth of various, contested locations manipulated by adding shadows and then reloaded up anonymously to Google Earth. Land workslandworks, the flats,4,383, (+1) Response are collaborations with other planetary species.

News: 2025 Currently gestating: If Your Eyes Could Zoom (omni directional Light/sound/text Installation)


deeper dive....(oeuvre)

Reflective Form:

Bowie's early work, such as the dynamically orbiting swell(1996) was centered on considering the framing and affirmation of cultural and visual heirarchies through the representation of others (charactarization; portraiture). Personal, found and well-known portraits were cropped of context and arranged into a sea of undulating facial expressions (revealing portraits that subtly progress through open mouthed gazes, frowns, smirks, toothy grins and back to gazes), nullifying the original images' social contexts. Bowie's image machine refuted sustained observation of particular subjects by making them only fleetingly available to the viewer.
Through further experimentation, Bowie developed a desire to create forms of visual experience that would structurally mirror her content, rather than simply relay it through already established means. Bowie designed hand built the projectors for her smaller works and her 360 degree installations. Bowie's installations, through their stranger form(s), contrast taken for granted conventions or techniques that still endure, (ubiquitous rectalinear strategies: from painting through photography and cinematography).

Other 360 degree immersive installations Bowie produced over the years became narrative in structure with bespoke image machines and include, among others: phenotypes, where we become night walkers observing the indoor activities in a car-centric suburban cul-de-sac; Slip/Host, an otherworldly place where Alan Cumming plays two roles in an outlandish narrative examining the excesses of contemporary capital and social order.