Laurel Beckman
is an artist working primarily in digital media,including public postings, gallery and publishing-specific projects. Employing a wide range of media and distribution strategies, Beckman seeks to contribute meaningfully to the evolving role of images within our culture. Beckman is currently an Assistant Professor of Integrated 2D Digital Media, Department of Art, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Beckman’s work examines intentionality through visual form and language. The intersections of consciousness + social conditions, and metaphysics + science form the thematic impulse behind her sanctioned and unsanctioned works. A driving interest in visual and verbal language and relative value threads through her practice. Her long engagement with the plasticity of language has led to research in image and text functionality and the role of will in narrative.
Beckman’s research centers on non-sanctioned public art, image/text theory, signage and visual communication, artists’ print and electronic publishing. Continuing a career long practice of exhibiting in alternative venues and journals across the country- including Southern Exposure in San Francisco, Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York, LA’s Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; Xtra, Visible Language, and Framework journals, Beckman’s work has recently been published in the New Zealand artists’ magazine, Log Illustrated, and Half-Wit, a publication of the Knust group in the Netherlands. Her work can also be seen on-line at CleanSurface.com, and ubu.com. Current projects include “I Want to Love You”, a video billboard (part of the LA Freewaves 8th biannual experimental media festival), and the multiple city alternate mapping project, “Day Tripper”. Beckman recently exhibited at the psy-geo-conflux (themed around Psychogeography) in New York City, the Austin Museum of Digital Art, and Site Street web journal. Upcoming exhibits are scheduled in New York and California.
Laurel Beckman participates in
Cinema_B – Slowtime? – Quicktime as an artistic medium
curated by Agricola de Cologne