Digital Orca

Douglas Coupland, British Columbia

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The Digital Orca sculpture acts as a sculptural conduit that allows the viewer to travel in time between the past and the future, also allowing the viewer to marvel along the way at the people and activities that created Vancouver’s thriving harbour culture. The sculpture also addresses the massive changes currently reshaping the economy of the Province.

Through the act of pixelizing an orca whale in three dimensions - a process that creates a crackling and unexpected sensation in the viewers mind - the orca cliché is turned upside down and what we thought we knew well is rendered exciting and new. On closer inspection, the colours and materials used in the sculpture’s surfacing evoke the everyday life of the harbour and the diversity of those workers on the working waterfronts of the Province.

Douglas Coupland
2009

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Artist Bio

Douglas Coupland grew up and continues to live in Vancouver. His first novel, Generation X, was published in March of 1991. Since then he has published nine novels and several non-fiction books in 35 languages and most countries on earth. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England, and in 2001 resumed his practice as a visual artist, with exhibitions in spaces in North America, Europe and Asia.

In recent years, Coupland's written work and visual art career have blended together to create a variety of books and a wide array of art and design works that explore the identity of both Vancouver and Canada's citizens. His book City of Glass, a series of small essays on the city has become a perennial bestseller on the subject. A 2006 film comedy, Everything's Gone Green, further explored ideas begun in City of Glass, and his one-season thirteen episode CBC series, jPod was set in Vancouver and explored its new high-tech economy.

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Digital Orca

Douglas Coupland, British Columbia

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