I am proposing here a mode of presentation based on a series of objects as props: rotating projections on suspended screens accompanied by sculptural wooden cylinders that begin to rotate when sitted by a member of the public. This brings to the foreground the element of mediation, through its co-ordination within the space of the real-time live event, investigating its involvement in the cognitive process and sensual experience of the public.
Thinking about the presentation of the piece, I put together a layout made of individual screens, to be positioned in response to the space of the event, other works and each other, rather than proposing one main screen/projection, where the images would appear together in different times. Each screen is positioned within corners and diagonal space and projecting a clickable image, connected to a mouse on a plinth. On the ‘event of a click’ the image is activated and begins its rotating journey.
‘I am what I see’ is an old saying dating back to the middle ages and refering to the effects of the visual world on the Lacanian ‘I’. The power of the image is by no means reduced in the age of reason, science and information, instead the digital further accennuates the problematic basis of pictorial culture, leading some thinkers to speak of the anxiety and loss of the image and call for the need to update Walter Benjamin and his essay on the age of mechanical reproduction. My attempt to brake down and analyse the pictorial effect, leads me to wonder wherther I am not myself hypnotized and subjected by power of the image.
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Here are some stills from time-based visual set-ups and tests of what could take place in simultaneous viewings of rotations. In presenting the project, each screen can be separated from the series and located in relation to the space.
To view the time-based version follow the link
www.eleanalouka.co.uk/set-ups.html
Through these first sketches and visual set-ups, I am already coming across with the question of format and presentation. Options of quantity and layout in space have not yet been decided and even if the project were to be presented on a digital platform, the number of screens and simultaneity of the images would have to be resolved. Wordpress at the moment allows for movie-clips but not interactive files, so visit
http://eleanalouka.co.uk/bust.html
for ‘clickable’ images or follow the link below for a time-based version. Further down, I bring up Luhmann’s text in regard to communication and interactivity in art, as well as some of his ideas on the relation (distinction) between form and medium
http://vimeo.com/12325619
Luhmann belongs to the German sociological tradition, which closely relates to the Medium Theory by examining how the medium –and in our case, the art medium and the digital- affect the psychic and social systems in their processing of meaning. Art is of particular significance to Luhmann because it is believed to be rooted in perception. He places perception to the centre of psychic experience and communication as the key function of social systems. His theory is developed as an al-round analysis of society …
My current project is a time-based project on the idea of materiality of the digital in juxtaposition with the physicality of live body. My recent practice has been largely preoccupied with the digital image and the media/platforms in which it functions and attains its meaning. I am particularly interested in the use of the Internet, the online ‘found’ image, the interactivity of the web and the outlets of the computer, the screen and the projection in space.
I am interested in the history and thory of the Mediology discource and the theoretical positions of Niklas Luhmann, Michael Ligner and other post modern thinkers, which propose interactivity and the exchange between artwork and ‘observer’ as the crucial property of progressive work and analogue to the idea of social and political antagonism, as articulated by Chantal Mouffe. The question of the materiality of the digital, its elusive nature, the difficulty in thinking of its elements and diverse functions seems to develop in parallel with sculptural and spatial practices, examining the material and the physical encounter between the artwork and the Viewer. In a way, the sculpture and the digital seem to c0-exist simultaneously, as opposite others, bound together as the two poles of …
