Canadian artist
Sylvia Grace Borda is a Canadian artist working in photography, video and emergent technologies. Borda has worked as a curator, a lecturer, a multimedia framework architect with a specialization in content arrangement (GUI) and production.[1] Born and raised in Vancouver,[2] Borda is currently based in Vancouver, Helsinki, and Scotland. Her work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally.[3][4]
Artistic practice
Borda studied anthropology and fine art as an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia (1991–1996) and then a MFA in digital media at the same institution. She studied and graduated with a BFA in photography and video at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1993–95).[5][2]
Borda achieved early recognition for her photographic practice. Her first exhibition was a national, juried photography exhibition entitled Photoperspectives '88, which ran during November 1988 at the Presentation House Gallery in West Vancouver. Elizabeth Godley praised Borda's work as "[leavening] an otherwise deadly serious exhibit with her cheerful view from Grandma's Window."[6]
More recently, Borda has produced works as a part of Frontiers in Retreat[7] that captures "intimate insights into Finland's agricultural resources and peoples".[8] This is in line with her interests in "re-addressing public views about specific socio-cultural landscapes and how cultural symbols may be co-opted to form new media platforms",[9] an interest which has generated an array of stereo-works and multi-dimensional tableaux produced in Google Streetview.[10] The innovative[11] Farm Tableaux won her the 2016 Lumen Prize,[12] and was a product of the "first explorative artworks in Google Street View in partnership with Google Business StreetView photographer, John M Lynch".[13] She has since gone onto pioneer further works in Google Street View creating tableaux featuring kissing couples in Nelson, BC,[14] amateur athletes in 'What are you doing, Richmond?' (2019)[15] to collaborating and producing the first interactive park system for the City of Dundee[16] taken from the perspective of a small park mammal in "Internet of Nature' (2021)
Research and teaching
Borda has held teaching positions as Senior Photography Lecturer at University of Salford from January – September 2010,[17] as MA Convenor in Photography and Imaging at Queen's University Belfast,[18] Associate Professor in Digital Arts at Emily Carr University of the Art and Design and Associate Researcher in New Media at the University of British Columbia.[19] From 2009–2016 Borda was an Honorary Research Fellow in Visual Arts at the University of Stirling, Scotland.[20][2]
In her academic posts, Borda examined how "cognitive responses evolve over time in relation to a media stimuli" as part of her broader research interests in "examination of popular culture and in the emergence of convergent graphical user interface systems." At the same time, Borda conducted research on "accessibility standards, tools and the plausibility of their facilitation for projects supporting cultural collections". She has participated in research projects on PDA deployment and cultural/visual recognition, examined the Canadian Heritage Information Network's mobile technologies and new wireless (was) enabled catalogue, and was the architect behind EdWeb, an "educational on-line content generation tool, designed to meet England's National Curriculum needs for school children aged 8–13."[21]
Public Art
Borda has delivered several public art projects in the last decade from digital to land artworks. In a recent collaboration (2020-2022) with partners she developed a series of climate earth observation artworks in Ethiopia[39] for presentation at COP26. This project was featured as a BBC Earth Instagram story, May 22, 2022[40] The project also garnered support from Johnston Space Centre, Earth Science and Remote Sensing team.[41]
As part of Borda's interests in climate change she was co-commissioned by the City of Dundee to co-produce 'Internet of Nature (2021),'[42] a portal of every civic park, seen from the perspective of urban park animals.
Portraying flora and fauna has also led to civic commissions to aid in economic regeneration and support for rural towns including the development of the, Lumsden Biscuit (2017) in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and a mural park system (2016-17) for Aizpute, Latvia.
In 2011, Borda created Working River, a landscape photomural which was installed at Number 4 Pump Station on the corner of No.4 Road and Bridgeport street. This work was commissioned by the City of Richmond Public Art Program.[43] It was also part of a submission that won an Award of Excellence Project of the Year from BC Public Works Association.[44]
