This work is modeled on a 1963 image by the same name by British photographer Jean Straker, known in the fifties for his erotic images of unconventional female beauties. His work was regularly confiscated by the British authorities, resulting in Straker becoming known as an activist who helped to change to the censorship laws of his time. I reconstructed Straker’s photo and then used a variety of digital processes to layer different types of pulsating visual patterns over it, from strobing light simulations to the simulation of the motion of a curtain slowly fluttering in the breeze, The result is a version of trance-art that is techno-sublime: an attempt to imagine a digital space of disembodiment that is post-op, post- pop, post-human, post-Pictures, post-capture and post-photographic.

Claudia Hart is an artist and associate professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Having emerged as part of a generation of 90s intermedia artists examining issues of identity and representation, she was an early adopter of virtual reality.

Here, she has used 3D animation to make media installations and projections. Later, as they were invented, other forms of VR, AR and objects were produced by computer-driven production machines.

The artist explains, “My censored work has been shown internationally in public spaces and on various public platforms. It often references classical art tropes such as the Renaissance odalisque and Hellenistic sculpture.”