Marilene Oliver
Pronouns: she/her
Personal Website: https://www.marileneoliver.com
Contact
Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts - Art & Design Dept
- marilene@ualberta.ca
Overview
Area of Study / Keywords
Visual Arts Digital Medical imaging Sculpture Multidisciplinary Exhibits Fine Arts Human Body Digital Art Virtual Reality Augmented Reality Printmaking Installation Media Arts Contemporary Art Artificial Intelligence Sculpture
About
An associate professor at the University of Alberta’s Department of Fine Arts, Marilène Oliver’s art practice is situated at the crossroads between new digital technologies, traditional print and sculpture. — she is especially well known for her ability to create objects that bridge virtual and real worlds. Throughout her artistic and academic careers, she’s deployed various scanning technologies — including MRI and CT scans — to create pieces that prompt reflection on humanity’s increasingly digital future.
Born in the UK in 1977, Oliver studied fine art at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in London, United Kingdom, where she obtained a master of philosophy degree with her research project Flesh to Pixel, Flesh to Voxel, Flesh to XYZ. Oliver joined the U of A in 2016 and, in 2022, she became an associate professor with the school.
Oliver’s work has appeared in both private and public galleries around the world, including in Greece’s Frissarias Museum, Casino Luxembourg, Spain’s Fundació Sorigué and Canada’s Glenbow Museum. Her creations are held in several private and public collections around the world. Since 2019 she has led and curated a series of large exhibitions as part of the research creation project Dyscorpia: Future Intersections of the Body and Technology. In its debut, the exhibit pondered the limitations of the human body through works by artists, designers, dancers, medical humanities and virtual reality experts, computer scientists and creative writers. She also leads the interdisciplinary project Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality which focuses on the ethics and aesthetics of working with personal data in virtual reality. Among her other projects, Oliver is currently working with long term collaborator and choreographer Isabelle Van Grimde of Van Grimde Corps Secrets on a suite of transdisciplinary creations which question the impact of AI on our bodies and relationships.
Research
Recent and Future Exhibitions
Body Clock19: Museum of Other Realities. Deep Connection VR artwork. November, 2020 – May, 2024.
Inter Mundos. Art Gallery of Saint Albert. November, 2023 – January, 2024
My Data Body. Alberta Printmakers. March, 2023 – February, 2023
Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality. FAB Gallery, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. February – March 2023
Arts & Health, the Convergence. SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, Vancouver Convention Centre. August, 2022
5 Global Print. Douro, Portugal. August, 2022 – September, 2022
The Dream of Ulysees. Villa Carmignac, Porquerolles, France. March, 2022 – October, 2022
Dissecting Bodies. Art Gallery of Grande Prairie. February, 2022 – May, 2022
Messis, Van Grimde Corps Secrets, Montréal, Canada 2022
Eve 2050 Installation, Muffatwerk, Munich, Germany 2022
Eve 2050 Installation, ZKM, Tanz Kahlsruhe, Germany 2022
Recent Articles
Oliver, M. et al, “My Data Body: Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality”, long art paper, in SIGGRAPH 2022.
Oliver, M. et al, “My Data Body” in Proceedings of EVA London 2022.
Oliver, M. et al, “Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality: Navigating the ethics of working creatively with personal data” in The International Review of Information Ethics, Volume 31, Issue 1. 2022.
M Oliver, A Hamilton, K Ingram, Best Practices for Working Creatively with Personal Data, 2022, https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-zpwd-qt15
Oliver, M. et al, "Deep Connection: Making Virtual Reality Artworks with Medical Scan Data," 2021 IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP), 2021, pp. 37-44
Oliver, M. “Human, Body, Experience & Isolation,” Ed. Pierre Ehmann, Murze, issue 12, 2020.
Oliver, M. “In love With the Laser Cutter,” Printmaking Today, issue 114, Summer 2020.
Oliver, M et al. Proceeding of Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality Ethics e_Symposium, 2020, https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-kwaj-c351
Monahon, C and Jameson, E. “Intimate Visions: Representations of the Imperfect Body in the Age of Digital Medicine,” Leonardo, vol. 53, Issue 3, pp. 281–287. 1 May 2020
Courses
ART 538 - Special Projects in Studio Disciplines: Advanced
Normally offered in Spring/Summer. Prerequisite: consent of the Department.