The Artifact (2018)

MFA Student

Major: Sculpture

Graduation Year: 2019

Artist Statement:

Joseph Goodwin creates immersive interactive experiences at the intersection of craft, electronics, animation, creative programming, and music. He uses objects embedded within participatory narrative, to engage an audience as well as question the nature and meaning of that interaction. For him this involves unpacking the complex relationship between an “interaction proposition” and the conceptual underpinnings of the engagement itself. Often, the work demands we develop an understanding of how images operate and the role of physical space/installation in the work. He believes the work promotes a transformational experience for the viewer that capitulate in moments of reflexive self-realization. Whether through navigating space or making contact with the objects themselves, one can see a mathematical objectivity in the way they directly reflect decisions. His work increasingly explores how providing the viewer with both play and a sense of ‘powerfulness’ serves Two functions: first as a means to remove barriers to discovering the historical record contained within the work, and second as a meta-awareness of one’s participation in this human history. This meta­reading that implicates the viewer arrives through the engagement process as the viewer makes sense of the imagery and their relationship to it.