Valerie Walker
Valérie d. Walker, a digitally rooted, fibre artist with active transmedia practice rooted in Natural Indigo dyeing and shibori-zomé techniques studied in Japan, has a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and significant experience in all levels of the Hi-Tech Industry, Valérie received her MFA on Earth Day 2007 from NSCAD Univ., in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her art work, blends cultures, fair-trade communities, naturally dyed textiles, Virtual Reality (VR) in a disconcerting and at the same time liberating manner, while pondering agency and the reverberations of textile craft and techno presences in our lives. Radio producer and on-air lead of the XXFiles, a weekly community radio show on Technogyny, available online at www.ckut.ca in “archives”
Valérie has taken part in numerous exhibitions world wide. As the first QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) Artist in Residence at OBORO in 2000, V created "Circadian Textures", a web-based QTVR explorable labyrinthine memory-scape of her natural dye process, touchable online @ www.oboro.net/webproj/VdW.
A featured artist, educator, community activist and Emcee at “les HTMLLes 07” (Studio XX’s digital bienniale); in 2005 VdW presented “Histoire Orales/Oral Herstorys” at “les HTMLLes 05”, this city of Montréal funded Techno-educational sound-art workshop series, created remarkable web projects. Designed to open techno-doors, V educated a diverse group of teens and mature artists in the skill sets needed to create web-based audio documentary. “Histoire Orales/Oral Herstorys”, can be heard and seen online at http://www.htmlles.net/07/en/index.html & http://projets.studioxx.org/projets/histoiresOrales_vsn1.
In 2006, during her MFA, Valérie was awarded the Brittingham Foundation Visting Scholar grant by the School of Ecology & Design, University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she took part in the “Trans” conference, taught intro and advanced textile studio classes, and presented in “Transmutations” a 2-person Trans-Media Art exhibition in the University of Wisconsin Design Gallery.
Based in Montréal, VdW teaches in the School of Fine Arts/Computation Art at Concordia University, while sustaining her fibres research and trans-media art practice. Her views on cyberculture can be heard via “The XX Files” a weekly radio show focusing on techo-life & dreams, which V has been producing and hosting for over 11 years, on CKUT FM 90.3 in Montréal (online at www.ckut.ca).
