BOO CHAPPLE: The Official Version

Boo Chapple is an Australian artist and researcher whose conceptually driven practice has been enacted across a diverse range of media including sound (installation, performance, design), performance installation, food events, video, books, and art/science projects. She holds a Master of Design (by research) from the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, RMIT University, Melbourne, and is currently undertaking an MFA in Art Practice at Stanford University, California.

In the past Boo worked as a sound artist, technician and tour manager on a number of theatre based performance projects and since 2004 she has maintained an interdisciplinary teaching practice (Media, Industrial Design, Art/Science). In 2006 she completed a year’s residency at SymbioticA funded by the New Media Board of the Australia Council and in 2007-08 she undertook at 12 month residency at the Design Research Institute, RMIT, funded by an Arts Innovation grant from Arts Victoria. In 2009, Boo was invited to teach the Vivo Arts Course and undertake a residency at the Art and Genomics Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Boo has received several sound commissions (ABC/The Listening Room, Performance Space) and exhibited work in national and international contexts, including Ars Electronica (A Rat’s Tale, 2007), the Beijing Biennale of Architecture (Parametric Flesh, 2004), the San Francisco MoMA (iSong, 2003) and Enter3, Prague (Rebreathe, 2007). She has been an invited panelist at the Whitney Museum, a speaker for Upgrade! at Eyebeam, NYC and presented work at numerous national and international art events and conferences.  Her writing and art projects have been published in Leonardo Journal, Aminima, Art of the Biotech Era (M. Pandilovski ed.), Plastic Green (P. Ednie-Brown ed.), and Second Nature (Hughes and Sundén eds) Her work has been reviewed in online and print media contexts.

Alternative Versions 1-3

WARNING: Sense of humor required

Alternative Version 1

Boo Chapple is a relentless autodidact, synthesist and jack of all trades. Being an artist is the best excuse she has been able to find for avoiding the over specialised needs of a 'real job'  and indulging instead her constant need to learn about everything and anything. Somewhere along the way she started to take the art bit seriously. But only in so far as go through the obligatory motions of decrying the art establishment and its collusion with capital. She has not yet given in and sold anything or gotten a job as an arts administrator. As such, she is thankful for her well developed ability to negotiate bureaucratic granting structures. This allows her to eat while still maintaining the illusion that her practice is untainted by market forces. She is often broke but generally happy in her state of denial.

Alternative Version 2

Boo Chapple has been sacked from every hospitality job she ever had. Her inability to serve up a bowl of Pasta Neapolitana without scowling, or dip an ice cream without dropping it in the chocolate led inexorably to a life of social alienation. Without any money to engage in normal social activities she eventually got caught up with the wrong crowd. Being unemployed meant that none of them could afford to buy anything, so they were forced to make things for themselves. This prolonged period of collective creativity left her with a profoundly over-developed imagination. Despite her handicap she worked hard to regain a place in society. She even held down a job for one year as a secretary. However, in the end she felt that it was best to embrace her disability and she is now a vocal member of Artist Pride.

Alternative Version 3

In her youth, Boo Chapple suffered from that affliction most common to all young people - a profound disenchantment with status quo, with the structure of work, with the alienation of labour, with the need to repeat the same proscribed set of actions ad nauseum to sustain life... until death. At the time, the best way she found to cope with the depressive weight of her disenchantment was to busily produce alternative versions of reality, parallel narratives, other visions. But gradually it all got away from her. She was so busy trying to keep up the production that she had no time for anything else. She was stuck repeating the same set of self-proscribed actions in order to sustain her own life in the world. She realised that she had fallen into the inevitable trap of adulthood. There was no escaping it, she had a job, and it definitely wasn't going to pay the mortgage.