Tiana Birrell participates in Sol LeWitt's _Drawing #33_
Tiana Birrell recently participated as a student draftsperson to install Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #33 (1970) at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. LeWitt’s wall drawings were conceived as a set of instructions for artists to execute, and in February, an authorized draftsperson came to Utah to oversee student drafters. Tiana Birrell was selected to participate from a pool of applicants by the Museum.
Tiana Birrell is a second-year Environmental Humanities student and current Digital Matters Fellow. Her final project for the M.S. explores the intersection of information, data and its relationship to the landscape. In her own words:
Water You Doing? Finding Place in the Digital seeks to emphasize the materiality of the digital realm and highlight its agency within the landscape[1] and local economies. I look towards data servers, a 21st century digital archive and storage infrastructure used to house all online interactions, and the copious amount of water and energy they consume, in order to dispel the perception that the internet lives in a place-less realm.
[1] Mitchell 5. The word “landscape” used here specifically refers to points 1,2, and 4 of W. J. T. Mitchell’s “Theses on Landscape.” They read as follows: “1. Landscape is not a genre of art but a medium. 2. Landscape is a medium of exchange between the human and the natural, and the self and the other. As such, it is like money: good for nothing in itself, but expressive of a potentially limitless reserve of value. 4. Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture. It is both a represented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified, both a frame and what a frame contains, both a real place and its simulacrum, both a package and the commodity inside the package.”
Mitchell’s points on value, landscape as mediated by culture, and the signifier and signified are particularly relevant to this paper.
For more information about the installation, including pictures of Tiana in action:
http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/43029/
https://umfa.utah.edu/SolLeWittInstall
https://www.slugmag.com/art-fashion/lewitts-wall-drawing-33-umfa-gets-some-sol/
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17958725455229929/
Sol LeWitt
Wall Drawing #33, 1970
Colored pencil, dimensions variable
Purchased with funds from The Phyllis Cannon Wattis Endowment Fund, UMFA2014.1.1