MY MOTHER’S TITANIUM HIP

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Kq1OrlXjcb8
2020
Digital Video Collage, 6 min 37 sec

Artist Jill Miller examines her mother’s unexpected death during the coronavirus pandemic through the lens of “everyday” quarantine life, where everything happens through digitally mediated experiences. Temporalities shift between the virtual and the real, the past and the present, the dreamy and the distressing. The landscape is unstable and fantastical: error messages interrupt video transmissions, her mother’s titanium hip hovers in the background, and the coronavirus makes an appearance during a conference call.

After her mother’s cremation, Miller received the titanium hip and scanned it to create a 3D digital object. The 3D object and physical titanium hip, covered in bone fragments, stand in contrast with each other. At the same time, Miller seeks knowledge from a psychic in the physical world who claims to have a connection to her mother in the spiritual world.

Miller creates a frenetic entanglement of video conferencing fragments, 3D models, a chat with a psychic medium, and computer generated imagery to explore the fracturing of time and space during pandemic life. She collages the online landscape of our new digital normal — fractured connectedness, anxieties about loss and grief, a dithering between life on- and off-line, and virtually conversing with strangers and friends.

This video landscape collapses physical, mental, and virtual spaces, and it mirrors the sense of longing and loss felt across the globe: the loss of freedom, togetherness, and time with loved ones.

Special thanks to:

Adam Hutz - Photogrammetry 
Paxton Paulos - 3D modeling and photo editing 

Exhibited at:
Art in the Plague Year at UCR: California Museum of Photography
Artist-Parent Pandemic at College Art Association 2021
Unbounded Unleashed Unforgiving at New Art City and CAA 2021
CICA New Media Art Conference, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art
Holding it Together at Palo Alto Art Center
You are not Special…, Artist/Mother Podcast