Rhea Lonsdale’s recent works frame the narratives of this technological age, with nods to futurist projections latent in science fiction. From Bradbury to Orwell, Anthony Burgess and Neil Stephenson, authors of science fiction have aptly anticipated current movements in technology and their impact on society. Taking cue from their narratives, Lonsdale uses installation to thematically represent current struggles, from life lived in a post-Snowden surveillance state to the insidious permeation of advertisement media in everyday life.
Media Aggregate is a sister exhibition to Collator, an interactive installation which framed the Five Eyes surveillance alliance and the CIA’s PRISM mass electronic data mining program as a being which collated not just metadata but the essential being of individuals. Where Collator is imagined as a being, Media Aggregate is a material. Using the same software used in commercial advertising as well as sampling from such, Lonsdale synthesizes and recycles this byproduct of commercial culture as a self-referencing medium.
Lonsdale holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in Studio Art and a minor in Digital Culture and New Media. Originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, she now lives in Edmonton working as an artist and arts administrator.
