Opening Reception: Thursday 29 November at 7pm

Skins-versions: the work uses Tactex MTC touch sensitive pads to create interactive skins

Developed by brother and sister team, Michelle Gay and Colin Gay, the work uses Tactex MTC touch sensitive pads to create interactive skins. Custom computers, flat panel monitors join the MTC as integral elements to the artwork. The installation is intended to shift people's approach to computer generated art forms - literally and figuratively.

scheme for installation

The artist/physicist team set out to create "poetic moments" with and for the computer - making sport of the notion that computers are 'just tools'. The MTC controllers allow each viewer/participant to create their own subtle and evocative vignettes within the digital skin environments.

Artist Biography

Michelle Gay is an artist living and working in Toronto, Canada, works with a range of media from drawing to needlework to bookwork to CD-ROM and web projects, investigating the junctures between bodies and technologies. She received her B.A. in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto in 1989 and her MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, in 1992. She has exhibited her work across Canada and pursues a practice in digital media and design through her freelance company Steamworks Media. Michelle has exhibited work at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (AB,) the Power Plant, Mercer Union, (ON), Mount St. Vincent Art Gallery (NS), The Museum for Textiles, YYZ Artists Outlet, Edward Day Gallery, among other galleries. Upcoming exhibitions include a 200' digital tapestry that will be shown in Prague (CZ) and Museum London (London, Ontario) in 2002.

Programmer's Biography

Colin W. Gay, a member of the Yale faculty since 1997, has been named the Horace D. Taft Assistant Professor of Physics. A native of Canada, Gay earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto, where he majored in mathematics and physics. He continued advanced study there, earning M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. While at the University of Toronto he was a member of the E769 (TPL) Collaboration at the Fermi National Accelerator. After earning his doctorate degree, Gay was a paid associate of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where he was also a member of the ALEPH collaboration, and was a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow. He became a research associate at Harvard University in 1994, and began his affiliation with the CDF Group there. At Yale, he has continued work begun at Harvard as co-convenor of the CP Violation and Mixing Analysis Group. Gay's research has focused on elementary particle physics, and he is currently studying B mesons to reach a greater understanding of the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter. In particular, he is exploring CP violations in B mesons, which create matter and anti-matter and are one of the requirements for the universe to exist.