Thinking about studio intention:
I want to examine two core ideas: boundaries between ourselves and the world as we experience it, and the perception of reality. I am particularly interested in these ideas in relation to digital technology - how experience of the offline world is facilitated, affected or mediated by digital information and devices, as well as the role this tech has as a mediating tool in shaping understanding and experience. I am interested in looking at this idea both in isolation (that is, exploring existing iterations of these effects) and as a transformative medium (actively using digital tech to facilitate alternative modes of seeing, looking, thinking, experiencing). In relation to the latter, concepts of of Object-Oriented Ontology, ecology ("The Mesh", rhizome, etc.), liminality, cognition and non-human agency are overlapping ideas I would like to explore. Concepts of data, mapping, and documentation are ongoing themes that also interest me.
I am interested in creating visual/sensorial experiences using new media, video, installation and drawing in the expanded field throughout these investigations.
Thinking about media...
Something I've been wondering about for some time is how to effectively navigate the issue of making work that is not too literal, prescriptive or fixed in what it is. Reading Celine Frampton's essay on the impossibility of unreal objects has been helpful, in which she talks about how putting an idea or object into a physical form, something completely tangible, removes some of its speculative nature
"Materialising speculative objects, as physical forms, is a concept I find intrinsically problematic, as physicality significantly reduces speculative condition and rather places it in relation to tangible existence. In exposing the object’s capacity to exist and function, the speculative object is then subjected to re-categorisa-tion and becomes an impossible, dysfunctional, realised or anti-aesthetic object: physical, interactive design or counterfactual artefact; a diegetic prototype; a model or prop; or sculpture. This idea of the speculative and the virtual is addressed by Carin Kuoni in Speculation, Now (2014), who points out that physical outcomes of the speculative process can be paradoxical, What emerges from the speculative process is and remains virtu- al....What emerges [does not] lack reality, but rather it remains in a process of potential realisation. The speculative outcome cannot then be made in the object of the real, but in an image of virtuality, in which any actualisation....corresponds to a virtual multiplicity.[61]. An example of a virtual medium I use in my practice is 3D computer model- ling and renders. Borrowed from the design, manufacturing and entertain- ment sector, computer modelling allows an image of a thing to be virtually described. In only being an image of a thing, and not the thing itself, the 3D model ensures form has no functionality and only an illusion of physicality." (9)
Once materialised, in any format, the idea then inevitably takes on the conventions and associations of that format, which opens itself up to criticism or assessment in that realm. I think New Media in particular holds some interesting abilities in being able to explore speculative reality, or reality from alternative view points. It is the "slippages between understanding and mis-un-derstanding [that] creates a space for speculation and possibility" (pg10). - something I find more readily explorable often through new media and tech (I should probably reflect on why this is in more detail in future...).
How can I as an artist create works that are both intentional and leave room for possibility? How much, and what, do I need them to do?
On NASA's Mars rover and its documentations
(Questions for myself)
could these images be considered speculative landscapes of sorts, if comprised of enhanced mosaics? (I'm not questioning the Moon Landing by asking myself that question, am more curious about this process of knowledge-building. It feels relevant to the past couple of years, in and out of lockdowns and restricted movement)... if so, what is the implication for other similar forms of visualising here on Earth?
simultaneous documentation from a distance and filtering of info - images and data have to pass through multiple different channels before arriving here on our screens; many steps; what conceptualisation of this alien landscape is taking place as a result?
How does this way of looking outwards at distant places relate to our relationship with the Earth, and all the places we have yet to explore on it? How do we decide where and what to look at, and how?
what agency does the rover have? What is it looking at?
We can only ever explore certain places and things through the lens of the technology we are utilising, or the way of looking that we ourselves are doing... That in itself is interesting to think about and opens up a whole branch of discussion around perception (i.e. Semiconductor's work)
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