Scale InSight

The Eco Art Incubator is pleased to support  Scale InSight, an art project by MFA student Maggie Shirley. This project explored the local Okanagan landscape and environment with emphasis on non-visual senses. The project ran in downtown Kelowna, BC from August 7th – 18th 2012. The project was a location-based mobile phone application that read a participant’s location as they walk along the boardwalk of Kelowna Waterfront Park.

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Maggie worked with programmer, David Kadish and musician Tim Smith, to create the mobile phone application using the augmented reality platform Layar. The program reads a participant’s location as they walk along the boardwalk of Kelowna Waterfront Park. At select points, participants will hear sung words and phrases that correspond to nearby mountains. To gather these phrases, Maggie conducted interviews with a cross-section of people, both sighted and non-sighted, and asked them to reflect on their understanding and experience of mountains. These words and phrases were added to an instrumental score that Tim Smith created from the local mountain elevation data. At the nearby Alternator Centre, there were interactive models of the mountains. Visitors were encouraged to touch the models and trigger video documentation of the community interviews when they did.

” My exhibition was a great success, I think and it couldn’t have all happened without your support. I have some photos attached, one showing the gallery show – three of my friends, all blind, exploring one of the touch sculptures and a couple of people out on the walk. “

~ Maggie Shirley

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Maggie Shirley is currently a candidate for a Master of Fine Art at the University of British Columbia, under the supervision of Stephen Foster. Maggie completed her BFA while living in Limerick, Ireland. She returned to Canada in 2008 and worked at the Banff New Media Institute, part of world-reknowned Banff Centre in Alberta. She moved to the Okanagan in 2010. Maggie has participated in art events in Ireland, Canada, and Spain.

She was an invigilator at the Irish pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Maggie is interested in relational art, art in public spaces and locative media art. She works with themes of body, technology and space.

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