Archive for the ‘technology’ Category

Statement

August 5th, 2010

(Nederlandse versie onderaan deze post)

In my work my fascination for computers, technology, science fiction and machines meets my interest in the working of the subconscious. Hereby I especially make research into the shifting of perspective between unconscious and conscious looking, changes of context and what coincidence is about.

The collages can consist of re-used advertising material, books, photographs and so on. I also use my own photographs. I cut the material / the images into tiny pieces (fragments). Because I am working on the material intensively (selecting material, making photographs, again selecting, thinking, cutting, glueing, and that over and over again) the material is imprinted into my subconscious. By fragmenting the images, context and perspective disappear. Yet each fragment retains its own image. By rearranging these fragments into a collage, another, totally new image appears. As an artist I am in fact a service hatch. I absorb the images etc. which surround me, and transform them into a new image, at which I submitted my own vision. This way I am actually mapping the subject.

I see this process as a form of technology which connects with the way our subconscious works, and I do not see it as a vague spiritual phenomena.

In view of the methods I use, the making of a work takes quite a long time. In addition it is hard to assess how much basic material (images) I need for a work, because I beforehand don’t know which parts of images I will use. And I also cannot make thousands of fragments at once, for only one gust of wind… Altogether this means I have to leave it to chance. Strangely enough this always works out well. Therefore I consider this as an organic formation process, because it results,  in some chaotic kind of way, in an aesthetic whole, just as in nature.

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In mijn werk komt mijn fascinatie voor computers, techniek, science fiction en machines samen met mijn interesse in de werking van het onderbewustzijn. Hierbij onderzoek ik vooral de verschuiving in perspectief tussen onbewust en bewust zien, verandering van context en wat toeval is.

De collages kunnen bestaan uit hergebruikt reclamemateriaal, boeken, foto’s etc. Ook gebruik ik  eigen foto’s. Het materiaal/ de afbeeldingen knip ik in stukjes (fragmenten). Doordat ik intensief met het materiaal bezig ben (foto’s maken, selecteren, nadenken, selecteren, knippen, plakken, en dat vele malen opnieuw per werk) wordt het materiaal in mijn onderbewustzijn geprent. Door de afbeeldingen te fragmenteren, verdwijnen context en perspectief. Toch behoudt ieder fragment een eigen beeld. Door de herschikking tot collage onstaat er een geheel nieuw beeld. In feite ben ik als kunstenaar een doorgeefluik. Ik absorbeer de beelden etc. om mij heen, en transformeer deze naar nieuw beeld, waaraan ik mijn visie heb toegevoegd. Op deze manier breng ik het onderwerp in kaart.

Dit proces zie ik als een vorm van techniek die samenhangt met hoe ons onderbewustzijn werkt, en  niet als een vaag spiritueel fenomeen.

Gezien de arbeidsintensieve methode die ik gebruik, duurt het maken van een werk vrij lang. Daarbij is het moeilijk in te schatten hoeveel basismateriaal (afbeeldingen) ik nodig heb voor een werk, omdat ik vooraf niet weet welke onderdelen van een afbeelding gebruikt gaan worden. Plus het feit dat ik geen duizenden fragmentjes neer kan leggen (1 windvlaag…), betekent dat ik veel aan het toeval moet overlaten. Vreemd genoeg komt dit het werk altijd ten goede. Ik beschouw dit dan ook als een organisch formatieproces, omdat het, net zoals in de natuur, op een  chaotische manier uiteindelijk toch resulteert in een esthetisch geheel.

Pixels

April 8th, 2010

Cool animation by Patrick Jean.

What do pictures want? (1)

November 20th, 2009

I’m reading the book ‘What do pictures want? The lives and loves of images’ by W.J.T. Mitchell. Interesting stuff, although English is not my motherlanguage, and I couldn’t find a Dutch translation. I think it’s quite difficult to translate, for instance the word ‘image’ has various meanings, when you translate it into Dutch each meaning uses another word.  I guess. But I am no translator. Obviously. I once met one. He was paranoid. Whether this was because of the huge variety of meanings and choices to make, or because he smoked a lot of pot, don’t know.

Anyway, it’s an interesting book, which I found when looking for literature about 9/11. Mitchell had written some essay (or also a book?) about it, or gave some lecture somewhere (…. o sorry… I always forget these kind of futilities). In thís book he also writes about 9/11. The terrorist act can be seen as an iconoclastic act, ánd at the same time as the creation of a new icon/image (the twin towers burning etc.). A quotation of the first chapter (page 25/26), for this can be seen also as a context for my own work:

” [...] A predictable objection to my whole argument here (JH: you should read the book ….:-) that it attributes a power to images that is simply alien to the attitudes of modern people. Perhaps savages, children, and illiterate masses can, like sheep, be led astray by images, but we moderns know better. Historian of science Bruno Latour has put a decisive stumbling block in the way of this argument in his wonderful book ‘We Have Never Been Modern’. Modern technologies, far from liberating us from the mystery surrounding our own artificial creations, have produced a new world order of ‘factishes’, new syntheses of the orders of scientific, technical factuality on the one hand and of fetishism, totemism, and idolatry on the other. Computers, as we know, are nothing but calculating machines. They are also (as we know equally well) mysterious new organisms, maddeningly complex life-forms that come complete with parasites, viruses, and a social network of their own. New media have made communication seem more transparent, immediate, and rational than ever before, at the same time that they have enmeshed us in labyrinths of new images, objects, tribal identities, and ritual practices. Marshall McLuhan understood this irony very clearly when he pointed out that  ‘by continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions. An Indian is the serveo-mechanism of his canoe, as the cowboy of his horse, or the executive of his clock’. [...] ”

So, more books to be read! And more questions raised:
‘Do I feel modern?’
‘Can I become my own image?

Another perfect world

July 31st, 2009

An interesting documentary about virtual worlds (dutch voice-over and subtitles):

Art & technology

July 23rd, 2009

At artmesh.org someone asked:
Does anybody out there have any particular beliefs or ideas regarding the relationship between art and technology?
I think, that everyone on this planet deals with some kind of technology, if you like it or not, and if you are conscious of it or not.
(perhaps when you live on a desert island you could escape it? but hey, how are you gonna get there? swimming & naked? and how did you get the information where it is?)
So all art is steeped in technology, in its psychological (we receive lots and lots of informations day and night, it’s in our subconscious and one way or another it
gonna come out of it) and its fysical (yes, even your brushes and paint…) context.

New York wall

July 23rd, 2009

newyorkwall

(photo of a wall somewhere in New York, from some magazine, april 2008)

Dancing crystals in the night

July 23rd, 2009

ss20

When researching the dispersion of lead, crystals happened to originate at the microscope glass.
The crystals form magnificent figures at the place where the solution evaporates.
This way the magic of science sometimes shows the beauty and vulnerability of our world.
The line between what’s real and what only lóóks real, can be quite vague.

(photo by Anna Kozhevnikova , source: 200 jaar KNAW – Seeing Science )