CHArt CHArt Computers and the History of Art - 1997 Conference Paper Abstract
To address the conference theme of the application of information technologies in the development of teaching and learning materials, I propose presenting a study of one artist's work. After tracing several of the possible intertextual readings of Ann Hamilton's installations, it became apparent that hypertext would be the most suitable presentation medium. Intertext to hypertext, with the additional layer of visual art, became an extensive illustrated web site containing over 20 subtexts.
This study, titled "a poetry of place: an intertextual study of three installations by Ann Hamilton", traces the significance of literary quotation and allusion in the work of this contemporary American artist, whose temporary, large-scale, often enigmatic installations have been the subject of much critical and curatorial analysis in recent years. In the three installations that are the subject of the hypertext, Hamilton referenced texts by the poets Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens as well as the French novelist Nathalie Sarraute and contemporary theorists Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders.
Five chapters function as a primary text. Embedded in them are links to related ideas and supporting texts. Within those links are other hot spots. Viewers may choose to follow a linear reading of the text, or to more immediately participate in the formulation of meaning by tracking a multi-sequential engagement with the text. Chapters two, three and four are reflections on single installations and their literary tropes. Chapters one and five frame and conclude the study. Twenty-two links of varying length inform the primary study and drive the hypertext.
Kelly Bousman is currently Assistant Curator of Exhibitions and Education at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum. She has an MA in Art History and has lectured at the University of South Florida and worked as an instructor in computer graphics. She has published studies on contemporary art and on the use of computers by artists.