Future Forward: Projects in New Media - Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler has gained increasing recognition for his imaginative installation works that combine sculpture, audio, and video projection to persuasively conjure up human presences . Limp dummies are animated by the faces and voices of actors who have been videotaped reading scripts prepared by the artist. The uncanny, even eerie effect evoked a real human character, seemingly trapped in a lifeless body. One’s identification with the figure is enhanced by Oursler’s dramatic, sympathy-provoking scripts which often reveal an injured human psyche. In this fashion, Oursler mines the depths of human neurosis, psychopathology, grief and other extreme emotional states. His works investigate multiple perspectives in human encounters. For the Henry’s “Future Forward: Projects in New Media” series, Oursler created new works and continued to explore the use of new technologies in his work.

The “Future Forward: Projects in New Media” series included two additional commissions and residencies, by Jennifer Steinkamp in June 1999 and Inigo Manglano-Ovalle in January 2000. This series of exhibitions was sponsored in part by a grant form the National Endowment for the Arts, allowing each artist to travel to Seattle to participate in a three-week collaborative residency which included the opportunity to work with departments of the University of Washington and private companies engaged in technologies relating to their work.