PROXIMITIES AND PARASITICS: SAGE

by Lucas Glenn

We are surrounded by noise. And this noise is inextinguishable. It is outside – it is the world itself – and it is inside, produced by our living body. We are in the noises of the world, we cannot close our door to their reception, and we evolve, rolling in this incalculable swell. We are hot, burning with life; and the hearths of this temporary ecstasy send out a truceless tumult from their innumerable functions. If these sources are stilled, death is there in the form of flat waves. Flat for recording, flat for closed ears. In the beginning is the noise; the noise never stops.

— Michel Serres, The

Parasite1

As I queue up for my anticipated three-minute wait, I set down my controller to respond to a groupchat message on my phone. I then navigate to a week-in-the-life video by a UK-based art critic.2 I take in a minute or two of the video, and pause as I hear the game chime. GAME FOUND. The video game’s matchmaking system connects me with 11 other players of a similar, average skill level, on a west-coast server. The game has selected a cyberpunk arena based on Lijiang city in Northwestern China. The game development company’s 2019 China-related scandal comes to mind. Activision-Blizzard, the massive USbased game studio, suspended a pro-Hong Kong e-sports player for sharing a pro-Hong Kong message. Donning goggles symbolic of the then-ongoing Hong Kong protests, player Blitzchung said “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.” This was in defiance of Beijing’s authoritarian actions and controversial extradition bill. His censorship led to a year of lost income, with a boycott and protests from pro-Hong Kong gamers following fast.

The game starts.

Mid-match, my audio breaks up. A warning icon appears, and playable characters start moving through walls. A connection issue terminates the round, and places everyone in a new server. New match, same players, different arena. “Wtf just happened” one player writes in the game chat. Another writes “***,” censored by the chat filter. Though apart from “ass”, I can’t think of many 3-letter curses. Could they have come up with a creative, shortened curse? A bodily reference? Sht, I’ll never know.

In a dense but rewarding text called The Parasite, French theorist Michel Serres explains that parasites are “stations and paths… with a flow of messages passing through the lines.” 3 These connections, he argues, consist of directional benefit. Often that direction is based on how a situation is perceived. The country mouse is a parasite of the farmer, as it eats crumbs off the farmhouse floor. The boss is a parasite of the employee, profiting from their staff’s surplus labour value. And, in a less profitable way, the employee may be seen as a parasite of the boss.

These relationships are often interrupted (fig. 1). The French-language definition of parasite can also mean noise, or static. Frustrating, fascinating, and fraught all the same, interruptions are the noisy “meta” that makes relationships visible. A server failure, a politically-charged game studio, and even an activated chat filter all interrupt my gameplay. Connections between politics, people, power, land, and energy appear via their quiet but disruptive rumblings, despite having been there the whole time.

With more relationships comes more noise. Noise-machines proliferate with technological advancements like smart-home products and more sophisticated trackers. A well-connected individual’s devices will also power more connections as hardware improves. These connections include motion, geolocation, heart-rate, nearby devices, synced features (like clipboards), bluetooth connections, and recording technology. In just five minutes I connect with nine other artists, a dozen Overwatch 2 players, international servers and their troubling energy demands, three rare-metal-reliant devices, three politically-charged companies, and a plethora of data trackers and algorithms, not to mention the quieter connections further in the background, including the personal and political ones established by living in a rented, family-housing apartment suite from the University of Victoria where I study, on unceded WSÁNEĆ and Songhees territory (figure 2).

The following chart maps the tangled web of the brief experience of a game, a video, and a chat. Inevitably, territory and resources are the primary hosts. And invariably, the map excludes a swath of less seen relationships. It resembles diagrams used by computer scientists that map the design of systems (figure 2).

Artist Sage Sidley’s practice is a catalog of relationships, distances, directions, and imperceptible networks exemplified by her online project Proximity Studies (2020).5 Her web-based project connects subjects of inquiry— drawing, surveillance capitalism, systems, shadows, bugs, and UI (user interfaces)— and sprawls. As a thesis project, the project contains didactics to help an intellectual viewer access Sidley’s work. But it is also a place to go for a walk. It interrupts the flow of browsing a website. Interactive elements navigate away from the site’s main body, often to unexpected pages with scans of wasps or drawn maps. I find myself wandering the fringes, poking at buttons to see where they’ll take me.

Sidley uses photos, drawings, installations, and digital media works to interrupt and make visible a web of connectivity. Her exhibition step, slither and scroll, brings together a swarm of elements; power cables, photos of insects, animated gifs on wall-mounted smart phones, and drawings that map people, power, topographies, and everyday movement. In the exhibition, Sidley’s installations, digital media works, and projections form a compost. Layers of images, objects, and the lines and spaces between them create a vibrant index of relationality. The largest installations are a couple feet taller than your average person. Their size is personable, but they are noise-machines that overwhelm us in busyness and fidelity.

This whelm describes the trouble of noise. In Franz Kafka’s short story, The Burrow (1933), it’s an unfixed and undeterminable noise that drives a burrowing creature to the brink of madness. In many ways, it’s the intermittent interrupter itself that defines the logic of the burrow. Unable to tell the size or source of the noise, the protagonist fortifies their “Castle Keep” against intruders. The protagonist tunnels and surveys to not let in noise. The protagonist hoards redundant stores of insectoid food called “small fry”. This excess of bugs helps in case something breaks in and eats any— the intruder could never eat it all themselves. They may even gorge themselves senseless (and defenseless).

Do the bugs in Sidley’s work constitute guests, hosts, or noise? Bugs play an important role in her work; the fly-on-the-wall is a reference to surveillance, a “bug” refers to a glitch, and “bugging” refers to strategically placing a covert listening device to record movements or conversations. These are clever references, but smart visual puns that play at the activities of tech giants is too easy and anxious a gesture on its own. In Sidley’s work, however, the thing can be the thing it is. A bug can be a bug. A drawing of a bug can be a drawing of a bug. In this way she shares real, connected things that can be appreciated because they are the things that they are. This side of her work is the burrower’s Castle Keep. Cleverness is delicately balanced with noise and poetics; the delight of a good drawing, the curiosity of a 3D scan of a bug, or the playfulness of a funny gif.

1 Michel Serres, The Parasite, 1980. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 126.

2 The White Pube, “week in the life of a critic,” YouTube, 2023, https://youtu.be/_3EuGFa627A.

3 Serres, Parasite, 11.

4 Serres, Parasite, 19, fig. 1.

5 Sage Sidley, “Proximity Studies: Online Thesis Exhibition,” Proximity Studies, 2020, https://www.proximitystudies.com/.

Lucas Glenn is an emerging writer and installation artist. He resides, researches, and works between the traditional territories of the ləkʷəŋən-speaking and nsyilxcən-speaking nations. Glenn is currently pursuing his graduate degree in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria.

Glenn’s work explores the material realities of climate crisis, colonization, and resource extraction through play and world-building. His work has been exhibited throughout Western Canada, and he has recently received awards and scholarships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the British Columbia Arts Council.

In addition, Glenn has written commissions for PAARC’s ArcPost, and in collaboration with artist Sarah Jim (WSÁNEĆ), for Open Space’s publication “Open Word.” step, slither and scroll (Installation detail - first iteration), 2022 Ink, graphite, charcoal, conte and pencil crayons on paper, Raspberry Pi 3 microprocessor, power bar, power cables, 30 x 48 inches, photo credit: Polina Teif

step, slither and scroll is a drawing and digital media installation that investigates how we move, navigate, observe and are observed, in and in-between the intersections of ubiquitous digital technologies and ecological systems. When navigating through physical space, we are connected to multiple imperceptible systems, from data-collection tracked by our personal devices to micro and macro ecosystems.

Similar to the invisible disposition of digital data collection, humans are always coexisting with insects in domestic, public, and natural settings often unseen or unnoticed. Additionally, insects are regularly compared to technology, in terminology (bug, buzz, worm, swarm), structures (webs, hives, networks, and hierarchical roles) and as innumerable entities with knowledge beyond our human understanding. In my practice I compare drawing to the act of digital-data collection. To draw is to record, trace, or mimic visual or immaterial data, to formulate personal reflections and connections, incubate ideas, and develop a deeper understanding. Both drawing and digital data collection are methods of record keeping and observing a subject. Issues arise with the recording and spread of information gathered from said ‘watching’. Digital technology personalizes our experience and influences our understanding of our surroundings; while remaining seemingly neutral and immaterial.

step, slither and scroll asks, if digital spaces are intertwined with our understanding of our physical surroundings, how can other environmental systems help us navigate the influence of data collection? For example, how do root networks, insect ecology and weather systems overlap with targeted ads, web-mapping platforms and networking infrastructures? Inspired by Hito Steyerl’s writing “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective” the cut, copied, and pasted images are suspended in a constructed space; exploring intangible feelings of unease, isolation, and vulnerability instigated by the current climate crisis and digital-data-collection.

INSTALLATION VIEWS OF STEP, SLITHER AND SCROLL EXHIBITION AT THE VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY step, slither and scroll 2023, drawings: ink, graphite, charcoal, conte and pencil crayons on paper and Mylar, digital prints on paper, silk and Mylar, Raspberry Pi 3 microprocessors, iPhones, Blackberry, HD players, LCD monitor, power bars, power cables; all photos: Yuri Akuney: Digital Perfections

Sage Sidley(she/her) is a white settler originally from Kmarkn territory of the Sinixt People (Rossland, British Columbia) and a recent graduate from NSCAD’s MFA program in fine and media arts situated in K’jipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). In 2016, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in visual arts and a minor in mathematics at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan situated on the territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. Sidley works with ideas of place and technology, in the form of expanded drawing, to explore the fluctuant roles of the observer and observed. A part of her practice is facilitating cyber security workshops for the arts. She has attended artist residencies in Berlin, Germany, and Inverness and Halifax in Canada. She has held solo and group exhibitions in numerous public galleries throughout Southwestern B.C. and select galleries in Nova Scotia. Sidley was a recipient of the Judith Jane Leidl Graduate Fellowship, the Renznick Family Fund for Student Creativity, the British Columbia Arts Council Scholarship, and the Robert Pope Foundation Graduate Scholarship. For eight years Sidley has taught drawing to all ages privately and for public institutions. She is currently an individual course instructor at NSCAD University and a part of the Counter Memory Activism research cluster as a digital design researcher.

2018 - 2020 Master of Fine and Digital Arts, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University

2011 - 2016 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Visual Arts, Mathematics Minor, University of British Columbia Okanagan

2021 Rerouting, The Blue Building: Stairwell Gallery, Halifax NS.

2020 Proximity, <www.proximitystudies.com>, The Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax NS.

2019 Deposits, The Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax NS.

2018 Planes of View, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon BC.

2017 Gap, The Reach Gallery, Abbotsford BC.

Boothed, ARTSCO, Kelowna Community Theatre, Kelowna BC.

Portrait of my Neighbour, Members Gallery, The Alternator Centre, Kelowna BC.

2019 Spring Artists in Residence, Inverness County Centre for the Arts, Inverness N.S. Inhospitable Print Exchange, Snap Gallery, Edmonton Alberta. Not Everybody* is a Painter, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax N.S. MFA group show.

Woodland, Inverness Centre for the Arts, Inverness N.S. Select Canadian Artists.

2018 Do It!, Hans-Ulrich Obrist's, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax N.S.

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Anna Leonownens Gallery, Halifax N.S. NSCAD MFAs. A Restless Earth, Lake Country Art Gallery/ Hanss Lujan, Lake Country B.C. Select Artists.

2017 Not-So-Silent Auction, The Alternator Centre, Kelowna BC. Select Okanagan Artists, Fundraiser. ArtsWells Mini Muralist, ArtsWells Festival, Wells BC.

Art on the Avenue, Featured Artist, Festivals Kelowna, Kelowna BC.

Art on the Line, UBCO, Kelowna BC. Select Okanagan Artists, Fundraiser.

2016 Drawing From Life, Kelowna Art Gallery/Liz Wylie, Kelowna BC. David Alexander, Rose Braun, Jane Everett,Wanda Lock, Amy Modahl, Gary Pearson, and Johann Wessels.

U100, Lake Country Gallery, Winfield BC. Select Okanagan Artists.

Red Dot, Alternator Centre, Kelowna BC. Select Okanagan Artists.

2015 Shelf Life: BFA Graduating Exhibition, UBCO FINA Galley, Kelowna BC. 2015 BFA Graduating class. The Parallel Collective: Re-, The Alternator Centre, Kelowna BC. The Parallel Collective with Sicamous Stories, The Alternator Centre, Kelowna BC.

Ink Belly, Printmaking at UBCO, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna BC. Select printmaking students.

2021/8 Artist in Residence, The Blue Building Gallery Residency, Halifax NS

2020/6 - present Digital Researcher, Counter Memory Activism Research Cluster, Halifax NS

2019/6 Artist in Residence, Inverness County Centre for the Arts, Inverness Cape Breton.

2018/6 - 2018/7 Artist in Residence, The Berlin Art Institute, Berlin Germany.

2019/9 - 2020/8 NSCAD MFA Blog, Graphic Designer & Photographer, NSCAD University.

2019 On Call Installation Assistant, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax NS

2017/6 – 2017/12 Curatorial intern, Art Council of the Central Okanagan.

2017/1 – 2017/2 Installation assistant, Kelowna Art Gallery.

2017/1 – 2017/3 Artist inventory assistant, Data Input, Jane Everette.

2017/5 Installation volunteer, Art Council of the Central Okanagan.

2016/10 – 2017/2 Front desk attendant volunteer, Vernon Public Art Gallery.

2016/11 Installation volunteer, Lake Country Art Gallery.

Inverness Arts. "Exhibition Preview." Inverness County Centre for the Arts: June 2019.

Mollie Cronin. "Curiosity Ignites." NSCAD University Relations: December 2018.

Katie Stobbart. "Pics or it didn't happen: Exploring the Impermanence of the Gallery Selfie.”Interview, Raspberry Magazine: November 15, 2017.

Chantelle Fawcett. “Art on Demand 3.3. Gap.” Exhibition Catalogue, Abbotsford: The Reach 2017.

Kelowna Art Gallery. “Drawing from Life artist interviews at the Kelowna Art Gallery.” Interview, YouTube: 2016.

Liz Wylie. “Drawing from Life.” Exhibition Catalogue, Kelowna: Kelowna Art Gallery, 2016. Print. Oddleifson, Shauna, “Sage’s Story.” Interview, Our Stories. UBC Okanagan: 2016.

Gimson, Francesca. “Gallery Review: Drawing from Life.” Phoenix News, UBCO: January 4, 2017.

Artist Workshop: Cyber Security for Artists, The Khyber.

Artist Workshop: Connect to Protect, Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery. Research Presentation: UAAC online conference 2020.

Research Presentation: AHGSA Practice Symposium, Concordia University.

Artist Talk: Artist Presentations: IOTA Bio Art Hangout. Art Bar & Projects.

Artist Talk: Sage Sidley. Introduction to Visual Cultures: FNDN 1200, Lecture NSCAD, Halifax NS Research Presentation: Medusa Anthropology Graduate Conference 2019, University of Toronto.

Artist Talk: Sage Sidley. Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon BC.

Guest Presentation: Sage Sidley. VISA 482 Lecture UBC Okanagan, Kelowna BC.

Artist Talk: Sage Sidley. CCS 250 Lecture UBC Okanagan, Kelowna BC.

Lunch Box Speaker Series: Artist talk with Sage Sidley, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna BC.

Quick Talks: Drawing from life, panelist, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna BC.

2020 NSCAD Student Award, Shortlist

2019 Judith Jane Leidl Graduate Fellowship

Renznick Family Fund for Student Creativity

Travel Subsidy, NSCAD University

Graduate Scholarship Award, NSCAD

2018 British Columbia Arts Council Scholarship

Graduate Scholarship Award, NSCAD

Robert Pope Foundation Graduate Scholarship

2017 Okanagan Art Awards, Emerging Artist Nominee, Arts Council of the Okanagan.

2016 Doug Biden Memorial Scholarship in Visual Arts, Doug Biden Memorial.

Special UBC Okanagan Award - FCCS DVC Art Purchase Prize, UBC Okanagan.

BMO 1st Art! Invitational Student Art Competition Nominee, UBC Okanagan.

2014 Frances Harris Prize in Fine Arts, UBC Okanagan.

2012

2016 Deputy Vice-Chancellor Scholarship for Continuing Students, UBC Okanagan.

2022/1 - 2022/4 Instructor, DRAWII-1500 2022W OL2 & OL3, 3 credit courses, NSCAD University.

2021/9 - 2021/12 Instructor, DRAWII-1500 2021F OL2 & OL3, 3 credit courses, NSCAD University.

2021/1 - 2021/4 Instructor, DRAWII-1500 2021W OL1 &OL3, 3 credit courses, NSCAD University.

2020/8 - 2020/12 Instructor, FNDN-1100 2020F OL7 & OL3, 3 credit courses, NSCAD University.

2019/9 – 2019/12 Instructor, Acting on Drawing, 3 credit course, NSCAD University