THESIS: Vibratory Lines

Vibratory Lines: Experiments in Expressivity

Karine Quigley

All matter is expressive. All matter, animate or inanimate, sentient or made, is filled with the infinite potential for difference and articulation. All things, all bodies, are equal.

In this context of absolute horizontality, expression is the innate desire for difference and qualitative distinction between things. It is the desire to shape matter and expresses the identity of a body: what it can do, how it can affect and how it is affected.

An Expressionist, as defined by the research of the thesis, is one that extends expressive desire by intentionally sh aping their surroundings. As architects, this intentional propagation of difference is second nature. We draw lines in space and create expressive territories. A bird might draw this immaterial line through song, but architecture draws these fine lines through space and condenses them into matter. Into brick-lines, or border-lines or atmospheric-lines. These lines are tools that sever and re-construct space, they oscillate between self-definition and the definition of their surroundings. They are vibratory in the nature.

In this thesis, the Vibratory line and how it engages in expressive territorialization, becomes the basis for a set of experiments in writing, painting, modelling, curation and full-scale Installation. All works comprised in the thesis engage in an extended territorial refrain of this line.

The examining committee is as follows:

Supervisor: Adrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo

Committee Members: Dereck Revington, University of Waterloo

Andrew Levitt, University of Waterloo

External Reader: Karen Houle, University of Guelph

The Defence Examination will take place on August 4, 2015 at 2:00 PM in the ARC Loft Gallery

Subtle differences in expression emerge:

Light reveals one string but avoids the next

A breath of air moves a line softly against the backdrop

Parallax rules, then dissipates as one travels from the periphery to the centre

Light white, to black, to red white, to orange white to white.

Beads on each line move slowly, imperceptibly downwards.

White dust drops to the floor.