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Selected works by Brian Goldfarb

Global Tourette: (http://www.globaltourette.net) a digital documentary and transnational media exchange project involving families of people with Tourette syndrome.

Ocular Convergence: (Web/CD-ROM) Note: this project requires the shockwave pluggin and a live Internet connection. Get the pluggin here.

This project an interactive, fictional, and critical examination of digital prosthetics for enhancing vision. It invites participants to consider changes in the subjective experience of seeing offered by these technologies, and the ethical and social implications of networking the optic nerve to allow two or more people to share the same experience of vision. My interest in this area grew out of work on disabilities and technology that I undertook as a Fellow at the Cornell Society for the Humanities in Fall 1998. Ocular Convergence has been exhibited nationally and internationally as part of the traveling exhibition Contact Zones (Several US Museums, Mexico City, Calgary, and Paris).

Pictures of Waiting Children: (project in development) Note: this project requires the shockwave pluggin. Get the pluggin here.

Pictures of Wating Children explores the culture and economy of international adoption and the Internet subculture that has grown up to support it. "Waiting children" refers to the language used to describe the thousands of orphaned kids whose photos are displayed in the photolistings of international adoption agencies (used both as mailings and on websites). The project is particularly concerned with how these images become imbedded in narratives (and rescue fantasies) and imbued with meaning by prospective parents prior to any form of real-time or face to face contact. Photolistings serve a range of purposes, providing a visual basis for diagnosis of health and disability, judgment of character, racial typing, and other criteria that form the basis of decisions about familial placement/matching. The project also considers how shifts in global politics shape the interpretations of these images. Diary entries within the project are loosely based on personal experience of adopting a 5 year old daughter from Kazakhstan. Project text is written in collaboration with Lisa Cartwright.

NYFA Online Artist Residency Project:

The links on this page are to selections from a project exploring web-based hypertext with Jr High students in NYS state public schools. It is part of a NYFA artists residency that I am taking part in with four other artists in dialog with students and teachers in distance learning format. The title refers my own Jr high school and the year I was in 7th grade. The project makes connections and contrasts between communications media then and now.

what[I]said This section uses rapidly changing text links to get students thinking about the dynamics of author/reader control which are designed into web-texts.
memorial '74 this is the opening to the project. To reset the title, just double click. After playing around with the swirling letters on the opening frame, find the photo of me from my Jr High yearbook to enter the project.
pop paint "Pop paint" is a spin off of the "memorial '74" hypertext. Click, hold down and drag your mouse to send things spinning. The direction and distance you move your mouse will determine the speed and rotation of things. Double-click your mouse to shift modes and create pop(corn) art.. Then, click, hold down and drag your mouse to paint popcorn art.