Jean Shin

For her project at FWM, Jean Shin developed an interactive "fabric" using thousands of discarded computer keyboard keys embedded in a continuous textile approximately 25 feet in length. The embedded key text, reads left to right, is a line-by-line transcript of the e-mail correspondence between Shin and the FWM project staff, Coordinator Abigail Lutz and Construction Technician/Studio Assistant Andrea Landau. In this way, the custom made keyboard documents the process of its own creation during the artistÕs residency.

In making the piece FWM and the artist worked with Moey inc., a renowned interactive technology research and development company to make the first three rows of the textile "active." Viewers are invited to participate in the installation by typing on these active keys. Their text instantaneously appears on the projection at the end of the cloth, creating a virtual continuation of the conversation within the key-embedded cloth.

Whether it's eyeglasses, umbrellas or computer keys, by repeating a single, mass-produced object hundreds or even thousands of times, Shin creates homogeneous, monumental structures that paradoxically emphasize the individuality and variation of the materials used. Through the laborious process of deconstruction and accumulation, Shin's objects also reveal new meanings and associations. TEXTile calls attention to the tactility of what is now a daily act for many—e-mailing. Undeniably, advances in technology in the past twenty years have made e-mail today's most prevalent mode of communication, one that has had vast repercussions on contemporary life. Shin distills the object that allows us to communicate globally down and reconfigures it in a way that calls attention to the physicality of the act of typing, emphasizing the relationship of the body to language.