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Kelvin Mason
Rods, Cones and the Myth of the Shiny Round Electron Cloud
People have seriously limited perceptual abilities. In fact, most other mammals, like dogs for instance, have more sensitive vision and olfactory organs in the order of several magnitude over human beings. We have had to use our oversized brains to find ways to compensate for our lack. Technology and myth are two of these ways. One of the things technology shows us is that there is a vast percentage of reality that is not available to us with our natural detection equipment. The places where our senses leave off are the points where our brains fill in arbitrary but seemingly plausible answers for the unknowns. We need this erroneous information because having perceptual gaps in our world view is disconcerting and may keep us awake at night wondering. A temporary fictional explanation is better than an obvious hole in the matrix of reality.
When I was fairly young, I went to go see The Empire Strikes Back in the movie theater. In an early scene, some ships are flying over snow covered peaks and ridges and my stomach was quickly in my mouth with that roller coaster feeling that I hate so much. I realize now that fooling the eye is almost the entire battle in transporting people to another place and creating virtual reality systems. Once you have tackled the problem of the eye, the other senses will follow, like my stomach did. I think the secret to a good illusion of reality is to exceed the resolution of the eye; to exceed the ability of rods and cones to differentiate picture elements; to make sure there is no film grain. The number of functional rods and cones in our eyes dictate our visual resolution. and how well we see. The problem with early computer images was that the resolution was so low (approximately six picture elements per inch) that the illusion of a photographic image on a computer screen could only be upheld if one squinted the blocky scheme out of focus, reducing the effectiveness of our retinas. Otherwise, the computer screen offered only an assembled matrix of blocks of different random colors. Once the grain or matrix of the image is eradicated, the illusion gains power. Our personal ability to resolve visual information dictates illusion for us.
Most people imagine an atom to look like a shiny colored ball because our early introduction to them required us to build models of molecules with colored plastic spheres attached together by white plastic connectors that represent the bonds between atoms to form molecules. Our visual interpretation of elementary particles is not likely to change because modern scientific imaging techniques reinforce this view even though it may be invalid as a representation. Our success in imaging a single atom is suspect. Our biases toward a recognizable reality even when dealing with tremendously extreme scale may tend to lead us to an erroneous visualization. There must be so much man-made technology between us and the visualization of the individual atom that we may be predisposed to reinforce our preconceptions because the tools we are using, being products of ourselves, incorporate all our human predilections. The same may be said of myth. Because they are a product of ourselves, they reflect our interaction between our internal operations and our external environment. Alien abduction, urban legends, soap operas, and religions all pick up where first-hand perception leaves off. They are members of a complex system existing to compensate for our perceptual short-comings.
Artist Statement - Sub Atomic Particles
Artist Statement - Sound Baffles
The advancements in technology have brought about curious changes in our understanding of the world that will surely only exponentially increase in the future. The revision of the paradigm of existence is constant. We have reached a crucial threshold where we can hypothesize and speculate about proponents of this paradigm which are beyond the boundaries of current physical perception using complex mathematics. The tremendous freedom in the unknowable (or at least the currently unknowable) is a great playground for the imagination as well as for science.
Exploring the processes involved in the undetectable, the indecipherable, the hypothetical and the obscured may sound like a job for scientists and, indeed, there may be very little difference in the tasks done by artists and those done by scientists. The main difference being that an artist plays by rules determined by the individual and a scientist works with the restrictive rules common to the entire field. Regardless, each seeks to present information according to what they have found, however it was discovered.
Like many scientists, it is the wonderment and curiosity experienced when learning or discovering something new that has always been a great motivator for me in art making. The final product, which may just appear as a remnant of the complex process involved, always seeks to convey this curiosity for the discovery of the hidden existence of the world and to promote discovery in general.
In the recent past, exposure to a great deal of technology made me aware of its inescapable permeation. The home computer multimedia revolution and the WWW provide unique opportunities for artists. In the same vein as my past bookworks, I can produce interactive works, but with a variety of different options left up to the viewer. Communication technology has provided us with a means to relate to others not present and for large groups of people with similar interests to share information without effort. Gay and Lesbian groups have found a new freedom on the net. Even paper-wieght collectors find solace and pleasure in their newly discovered numbers. The same has happened for the closeted or openly ridiculed experiencer of alien abduction. My contribution to a greater understanding of the phenomenon will be the employment of CD and W3 technology for the purpose of creating an environment where the ostracized alien abductee can experience a sense of waking recognition, and everyone else can experience (to an extent) one possibility of another existence glimpsed before only through a vail of modern mythology. Ultimately, my goal is the integration of this current work with alien abduction senarios into a CD ROM package in a cohesive, entertaining, informative, and, interactive way.
The process:
The process involved in the making of the latest series of work is just that: a process. Information from abductees is compiled into a body of data. The details of verbal accounts of an abductee's surroundings during an abduction are constructed into a 3D space in the computer and rendered with an attempt at photorealistic accuracy. The prototypes are then posted on the WWW and the abductees themselves can comment or suggest changes until they are satisfied, no matter where they may be. The final renders are inserted into QuickTime VR format and viewing of the space can be accomplished in 360 degrees. Supporting documentation of the process is provided and an interactive multimedia program provides an instructive framework in which to view the images.
Bibliography:
1. Timothy Good, Alien Contact, Morrow, New york 1993
The Problems of Art Reproduction
First, the artist may have drawn or painted, using traditional media on traditional papers or other substrates. These images were then used as source materials for digitization. The digitized image would then be manipulated by a computer and when the desired end product is obtained, a print is made on a desktop or large format printer on film or other material to be used as a matrix for a traditional print technique. (Most likely lithography.) The lithographic process is executed in the traditional manner. This constitutes the actual art production procedures. But in order to make the images available in this book, we must again photograph the artwork on a negative, we must print the negative to paper or scan the negative directly into the computer so the image can be added to the layout of the book. The digital layouts get printed once more. The best case scenario is that they get printed directly to a printing platemaker for the offset process, otherwise, films are printed to make into plates for the presses.
The degrading path to the viewer takes its toll on image quality and anyone who visits a great work of art after seeing it reproduced in books or as slide projections knows that, in most cases, there is nothing like seeing the real object.
The Lesson of the Bunnybook
Many years ago, I was at a meeting of bookbinders in a small chamber of the National Archives of Canada. An archivist was making a slide presentation of some of the more interesting books in the holdings of the National Archives. We talked about issues of conservation and repair and we saw images of many fascinating and ancient documents and tomes of great importance and rarity. Then, up popped the pink bunnybook. It was a book covered in pink fun-fur and sported a bunny head at the top of the spine and a little cotton tail at the bottom. It was a bunny and a book at the same time. I thought it was great and it eventually inspired me to experiment with what else books could be besides books. But someone else there did not share my appreciation. It was a stuffy old guy with a British accent and he shook his head and declared that this was not a book. He wanted books to be refined and elegant - small monuments of fine craftsmanship. He wanted them to be leather and Japanese papers and gold guilding and intricate headbanding and fine printing. Not pink fun-fur. This book couldn't uphold his precious beliefs and he rejected it so he could remain safe in his elitist notions of what books are supposed to be.
Occasionally, I've noticed similar attitudes when it comes to digital images in the printmaking realm. They say, "Computer print-outs are not printmaking". They have some reason or another that is usually related to historical roots or ideas about craftsmanship, permanence or "hands-on" aspects of printmaking. Many art schools have had a hard time deciding where the production of digital imagery fits into their programs. Some have opted to place it in the photography department, others to confine computers to the graphic design department. I would argue that computers might find a home in every department of every art program. Their diverse capabilities have prompted many expensive "digital media" programs to be instituted in an effort to keep computers out of the more traditional departments. I think this implementation will eventually fail.
Consensus and the Alien Prevalence
The contemporary alien image was introduced to mainstream culture in 1987, when Whitley Strieber managed to find a publisher for his new autobiographic book "Communion: A True Story"1. Because Stieber was already a successful fiction/horror writer, he had all the makings of a controversy. He was claiming that the image on the cover of the book (Fig.1) was a representation of something he really did experience and the writings inside the book were descriptions of the encounters. Because he was a person that made up stories for a living, there ensued an incredible debate on his veracity and motivations. Nevertheless, the book became immensely popular and remained at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for many weeks. The image that graces the cover of this book, (now in it's 11th printing) marked the beginning of a mass distribution of the first image of an alien now commonly known as a "grey". Although the book cover was painterly and highly rendered it had an essential look that has informed all consequent interpretations. Over the last decade, the hands of designers and illustrators have evolved, simplified and tightened the essentials of the image into black and white graphic interpretations and ultra-smooth airbrushed illustrations. The alien icon that evolved from this first image is now used in advertising, t-shirts and a tidal wave of other consumer items exploiting the alien image.
Strieber's alien visage would have disappeared into science fiction history if it had not been for the small amount of initial consensus that was built by it's popularity. In the late 1980's, the internet was just becoming useful to ordinary people outside academia or the military. The genisis of online communities where being hacked out of the raw cyberspace. People with similar interests and experiences were coming online to find some solidarity and friendship in an environment safe for talking about unmentionable things. Anyone with a controversial or unusual experience to share could have productive and therapeutic interactions with others, without the involvement of a personal therapist or psychologist. People claiming to have had experiences similar (and not so similar) to Whitley Strieber's had a place to exchange stories and compare experiences in relative safety. Among the various other alien contact stories, the alien abduction narrative in particular began to build a loose consensus. The image of the "grey" alien and its associated behavior became the dominant theme. Because there was consensus, there was also credibility. This credibility was enough to warrant the production of television specials and docu-dramas. It also inspired a number of other writers to explore the phenomenon. Growing in popularity was the notion that there was something to this whole alien abduction business, that it meant something. That, if nothing else, it told us something about ourselves in a way that we never could have come up with consciously.
By the mid 1990s, the iconographic version of the grey was everywhere in hip youth culture. In some cases, the "grey" icon has been utilized as corporate identity by hip commercial ventures like "Alien Workshop"2 to sell skateboards and surfing products. The graphic designer Bill Barker of The SCHWA Corporation3 has taken it a step further. SCHWA makes the alien icon itself the product (Fig.2) and endlessly churns out the image with whatever satirical new slogan or graphics he can think up to accompany it. Some are calling it performance art. SCHWA has also taken it another step by saying that they own the image of the alien face and, therefor, what may prove to be one of a handful of new archetypal images for the new millennia might actually already be copyrighted.
Another current use of the alien icon is in a grass roots resistance movement started by V2, an anonymous individual in Washington state. Here, the now familiar face of the grey is used as a warning:
The Spread the Word resistance movement began as a call for discernment and action against abuses toward humanity demonstrated by so-called alien entities. With abduction reports on the rise, the nature of the perpetrators is becoming more clear. These aliens, specifically the Grays and their associates, are breaking the laws of both mankind and God. They kidnap, rape, implant and traumatize men, women and children repeatedly. They have no compassion for emotions or pain, mirroring the worst of our own behavior. STW has established a voice of resistance through an emblem - the image on our stickers. We are saying NO to both oppression and to passive victimhood. Highly respected researchers of alien resistance are finding that strength of spirit and righteous anger are successfully averting abduction attempts. People need to know and to believe: saying NO works. STW encourages a careful search for the truth. With much confusion and conflicting information clouding the facts, we urge everyone to carefully assess the testimonials, including ours. Think about it, absorb it, use your intuition and find your own truth. Most importantly, take an educated stand. This statement taken from V2's website4 reveals the true intentions of the movement that might be lost or misinterpreted in the image that V2 propagates. V2 produces and freely distributes small stickers of the grey face with a red circle and diagonal slash indicating "no" or "anti" alien. (Fig. 3) Actually, the image is perfect in its ambiguousness. The same image can be interpreted in so many ways that even groups with opposing political agendas want to use it to state their own beliefs. V2 has indicated that the response to the image has been tremendous. Diverse groups of people including extreme skeptics, new age pacifists, the religious right, members of satanic rock bands and U.S. marines have all written to receive over 4 million (and counting) of the free stickers through the mail. Clearly the popularity of the image is universal and crosses boundaries like few other things today. The current global climate has produced a lively discourse around the existence of aliens. This discourse has reached a level of popularity where an icon is needed that offers immediate and unambiguous identity to the discourse. The iconization of current events and newsworthy quips is immediate and sometimes occurs even as the event is still happening. The "logo" for an event always appears over the shoulder of the TV newscaster and can be seen as having a legitimizing effect. Before the computer revolutionized design practices, the creation of a logo was an expensive and serious undertaking. Anyone who had one was automatically legitimized. While the artist formerly known as Prince forced his meaningless icon artificially, the alien discourse spent fifty or more years cultivating the icon it deserves. The existence of these icons represent a change in thinking according to Michael Lindemann, a political scientist and UFO researcher from California. Lindemann considers the revelation of aliens existence on earth a possibility of social importance on par with nuclear war or an environmental catastrophe. He terms these possibilities "meta-levers" and explains the concept as being "(any force) capable of disrupting the momentum of history on a global scale in completely unpredictable ways"5. Historically, meta-levers evolve through 3 stages. The first of which is a general denial and rationalization phase. The lack of hard data and public apathy causes the population to ignore or forget about the potential force. The second stage is characterized by extreme confusion and debate. The public becomes engaged in a lively and productive "brew-ha-ha"6 that can last for a substantial amount of time, perhaps decades. Its completion ushers in the third and last stage of official recognition and mitigation of the force. Lindemann argues that the meta-lever of global nuclear war has reached the third stage and the situation has been diffused through arms treaties. His example of a second stage meta-lever is the environmental crisis. This topic is still in serious scientific debate but seems to be on its way to being a third stage meta-lever as consensus is reached. Lindemann pegs the alien presence question as being somewhere in transition between stage one and stage two. I would argue that the existence of these alien pop icons previously discussed would be an indicator that currently, this discourse has fully reached stage two and is not far behind the development of the environmental meta-lever. If there was no popular and public debate, there would be no need for a universally recognizable icon. Of all the alien races reported, the greys have been chosen to be the poster child for the non-human. The mantis-people, the reptilians, the Nordics and so many other less commonly reported races all have interesting attributes, but it is the bug-eyed grey that comes to the forefront and into popular culture iconography. What special attributes does the grey have that the others do not? The answer is most likely hidden it the abduction narrative that the grey is so heavily associated with. The Grey is most commonly involved in an abduction narrative that simultaneously taps into numerous insecurities and fears that exist in contemporary American culture. Jodi Dean, an Assistant Professor in Political Theory at Hobarth and William Smith Colleges, developed this argument when she authored "The familiarity of Stangeness"7: As a thematization of insecurity, the abduction narrative presents an extreme version of a classic ufological theme: the inability of the government to protect us. From its early years in the Cold War up through today, ufology has attributed the paucity of physical evidence of flying saucers to a massive cover-up, explaining that the nation's political, economic, and religious institutions would collapse if the alien truth were known. Alien technology is superior to human--it can't be stopped... The abduction narrative extends this insecurity from the air above the nation to the bodies of its citizens. Even in our homes, our beds, our cars, we are not safe. Even when we think we are safe, we are not safe. Our bodies can be violated without our knowledge, our DNA stolen in a galactic version of the human genome project. Somehow our time is "missing," taken from us. Horrible things happen to us that we can't remember. We cannot protect ourselves. We cannot protect our families. In the basic abduction narrative the abductee is paralyzed in her8 bed and unable to move and defend herself. Aliens enter the room miraculously straight through a wall or closed window, float the person up to a waiting spaceship overhead, often through the roof of the house or through a closed window. The abductee is stripped of clothing, made to lie on a cold metal table and have various medical procedures done particularly involving the reproductive system. Implants and/or human-alien hybrid fetuses are embedded or removed, and the person is sometimes shown the products of previous implantations now several months or years old. The person is then returned to her bed and put to sleep and in the morning more than likely not remembering that anything had transpired until some unlikely stimuli triggers the memory. The amazing ability for this narrative to so compactly voice our fears about technology, knowledge, science (in particular genetics), multiculturalism, power, secrecy, militarism, religion, conspiracy, millenialism, control, authority, the future and a host of others is what makes these accounts so compelling. The more important issue than UFO reality/unreality at the moment is how useful the discourse is to us. How can these stories educate us? What do they tell us about who and what we are? As V2 most aptly points out, the aliens "mirror our own worst behavior"9. Whether these accounts have any basis in "objective reality" become immaterial in this portion of the discourse. We start to see that these accounts are all about us and not so much about aliens. Progressively, these fears seem not to be unfounded. Technology will be advancing so rapidly in the next millennium that it threatens to become a juggernaught capable of creating life itself from scratch. MIT's K. Eric Drexler paints a very plausible picture of just how profound and how dangerous the advance of technology will shortly be in his book "Engines of Creation"10. It is also somewhat disturbing that most of the advances Drexler mentioned as eminent when the book was written in 1987 have come to pass. Likewise, Tim Weiner exposes the embarrassing underbelly of the Pentagon's Black Budget in his book "Blank Check"11. The sheer numbers of taxpayer's dollars implicated in this book are reason enough to cause suspicion. However, we don't need these specialized sources of information to make us suspicious. As William S. Burroughs said, "If you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention"12. The general mistrust in recent American culture comes perhaps from recent media and educational exposure of many past wrong-doings. The media focuses almost entirely on the negative. Americans learn that the people in power have done so many terrible things in the past and they are probably still doing them but haven't been caught yet. It's easy to delegate blame for what ever wrong-doings on the absent personae of the alien, unable, unwilling or at least unavailable to defend itself. Because the alien, almost by definition, is unobtainable, unquestionable, and incomprehensible, it makes a very good scapegoat for creating a blameless scenario that still allows for discussion of issues that scare us. With this in consideration, the image of the alien might seem like it is being used as a moniker of contemporary affirmative paranoia. Jodi Dean sees the image of the alien as sometimes more literal, that it might be a expression of our fears of foreigners and the gradual invasion of other cultures. The alien image may embody an insecurity about illegal aliens and the strains they put on the American welfare system etc. However, discussion of the existence of other-worldly aliens may also have another more positive effect: ... the reality of the alien is supposed to13 stimulate a sort of species-consciousness: ethnic and sexual differences collapse as humanity begins to understand itself as a whole. The borders between Protestants and Catholics, say, seem trivial when Earth is encountering fifteen mile wide saucers or teams of grays systematically mining human DNA. Given the rise in nationalisms and ethnic hatreds since the end of the Cold War, that more and more people may take comfort in stories evoking a global humanity may seem quite predictable. From many standpoints, the open discussion of aliens on a mass cultural level must be a positive sign of progress. Whether it is a manifestation of our deepest fears, a tool to allow us to reflect on our own actions in a global culture, or a systematically designed program of desensitization, the popular discourse of aliens through all venues and modes, including the iconic representation of the grey can only help us understand more about ourselves and the possibilities for the future. After all, it would seem foolhardy for any alien race to present itself officially before this private human discourse has fully exhausted itself, but after that, the planet is fair game.
Artist Statement - Space Suit Super Models
That dream was smashed the day of my first roller coaster ride. An overactive gag-reflex has rendered me earthbound for the foreseeable future. I decided to become an artist instead (after all, it's the next best thing to being an astronaut). I wondered how many disappointed knock-kneed, overweight, pigeon toed, nearsighted, color-blind, tone deaf little boys with asthma there are out there. And then I wondered how many little girls. It seemed to me that the equivalent contemporary predicament for little girls was not being able to become a super-model. The specific physical attributes make the career prohibitive for all but a very few. In part, these new works are about this co-relation, but they are also about trying to find new ways to fund the space programs that I value. Don't you think the "Sports Illustrated Space Suit Edition" would go over quite well?
Artist Statement - The Perpetuation of Boris Karloff
Now in its American circumstance, this image of the mummy ventures back to meet the original intent of mummification: to preserve and honour the dead. But what sort of monumental tomb might house the preserved bodies of our postmodern experience? There is a great myth about Walt Disney and his cryogenic preservation. I was reminded of something that Jean Baudrillard said about Disneyland: that it is a simulation of America that is more real than the original. It is a hyper-concentrated version that makes the real America seem like a pale impotent ghost in comparison.
A hyper-saturated pixelboard-inspired monument that speaks of glossy perfect bubbly excess is required for our big-screen gods. -and it's got to be fun for the whole family.
CCP Acquisitions: Esta Nesbitt - Xerox Art Pioneer
Born in New York City in 1918, Esta Nesbitt acquired an extensive education at several local universities including Columbia and New York University. She became known for her fashion illustration and began teaching drawing painting, printmaking and experiments in intermedia at Parsons School of Design in 1964, a position she maintained until shortly before her death in 1975. It is interesting to note that she never actually taught photography per se, but may have incorporated it into other courses. Esta Nesbitt was perhaps most well known for her talents as an illustrator and had work reproduced in many publications such as the New york Times Magazine, Madmoiselle and Harper's Bazaar. Despite her excellent academic credentials and steady exhibition record, she remained a relatively obscure artist throughout her life like so many other hard-working talented women artists throughout history.
"...I recall the scenario that Xerox found her SO EXPENSIVE regarding access to their machines that they eventually posted a Xerox employee to actually push the buttons for her. This was an effort to slow her down. She felt stymied and frustrated by the unnecessary layer but acquiesed."
The extreme quantities produced were justified in that several discoveries were made about the underutilized art medium. In Esta's extensive experimentation, a toning process was discovered that allowed the monochrome images to be colored in a variety of earth tones anywhere from deep sepia and golden yellow colors to rich greens through the application of varying amounts of heat to the finished copy. The result was a body of work integrated into a performance piece called Everyman. Not only did Esta discover new processes, but she invented names to define them as distinct and separate from other processes. The process mentioned above was dubbed Chromacapsa and is defined as a process, made possible by the variation of xerography used in Xerox copiers, by which color is added to the xerographic art works. Other invented terms include Transcpsa and Photo-Transcapsa. The techniques that these terms describe are basic and these long and unfamiliar words to describe them seem unnecessary. Esta was a consummate documentationalist and recorded many of the newly discovered processes on reel to reel tape. Although some of the tapes made it into the archive at the CCP and the Smithsonian Institute, many of the tapes are now lost. Documentation and reproduction of her photos, writings, receipts and correspondence comprise the bulk of the Nesbitt archive along with thousands of pages of photocopies. Rarely were any of her own drawings evident among these. It may be that she regarded dealing with technology as strictly a conceptual and documentary affair and aesthetics and expression had little to do with the process at the time. This may also be an artifact of the way the Nesbitt work was split up after her death in order to find homes for everything in her possession.
"Esta Nesbitt also had a second career as an experimental artist and a pioneer in the development of Xerography as an art medium ... Her most important discovery in this realm was when she developed a method of transferring a black and white Xerox print in color to paper."
This description describes fairly accurately the technique of Xerox inking. If Esta Nesbitt is the originator of the Xerox transfer and/or inking process, this alone would be a significant original contribution to the art world as this process is commonly taught and widely utilized, particularly in printmaking studios. However, the physical evidence in the form of actual prints utilizing this technique are not present in the CCP archive but it is possible that they may have been sold or donated separately to a private collector or another recipient.
After Esta Nesbitt's death, several institutions acquired portions of the contents of her tremendous output. Among these was the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian was the recipient of a large archive of documentation of Esta's research and development work . It is possible that the reel to reel tapes lost may exist in this archive and might prove that Esta Nesbitt is the originator of the Xerox transfer/inking methods. However, this is beyond the scope of this paper as this information is unmicrofilmed and is restricted to the storage facility in Washington D.C., requiring an appointment on site to view its contents. If these suspicians are true, this avenue of inquiry merits considerable attention and should be continued in the future.
"Esta Nesbitt represents a long and important history for women in alternative processes (and) if she is seen as a precursor to modern digital forms it is because she laid the groundwork by making it (Xerography) a life's work."
The current director, Terry Pitts indicates he thought that James Enyeart suspected the Esta Nesbitt archive would be of interest in the future . As an early foré into electronic technology as an image making process for art, this work would to be among the earliest. The decision to acquire an archive takes considerable forethought and is a delicate balancing act between several factors. Terry Pitts admits that it is far from an exact science. It may be that a certain body of work being considered for acquisition strengthens another more notorious archive already in the collection, or it may fill in some of the gaps that exist in the collection. It may be that in Jim Enyeart's eyes, the Esta Nesbitt work fit the criteria for these points and more.
From some viewpoints, the Esta Nesbitt archive is a curious anomaly in the CCP, but in others it is part of a perfectly natural progression through photographic history. The historical collecting habits of the CCP propound a bias toward more traditional photography, but the inclusion of Esta Nesbitt's archive breaks with this general trend and may point toward a more equitable contemporary acquisition process. As the world changes, so must the Center for Creative Photography. The pioneering work of Esta Nesbitt in imaging technology was the product of a tremendous personal effort. An effort that marks a particular historical stage in the evolution of high technology art making, an embryonic stage that percurses the incredible photographic imaging technology of both today and the near future.
Tony Oursler -- Spectral Disorder
The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
In a piece called Spectral Disorder, 1995, Oursler presents a very small 6 inch rag doll slouched on a non-descript leatherette chair. The piece is situated in a secluded back corner of the gallery in almost total darkness where gallery traffic is low and things are quiet. I was urged by a friend, who had seen the work previously, to enter only when there was no one else inside to get the full effect. The rag doll is simultaneously tiny, amusing, defenseless, and incredibly frightening. The facial features of the doll have been left purposefully absent to accommodate the imposition of a very rich and bright video image projected from a miniature projector. The flat face of the doll is replaced by a very real looking visage of a young woman in a sporadic one sided conversation of complaints and demands that fluctuate between pathetic whining and barking orders. The confined and well focused light from the video projector is the only source of illumination for the entire room and the viewer's attention is immediately drawn into the amazing illusion it creates.
The doll's captivating qualities are entangled in a complex relationship resulting ,in part, from the conflation of image and object. The dimensional qualities of the doll's stuffed body are eclipsed by the life-like but ultimately flat projection on its convex face. Actual three dimensions are supplanted by the illusion of three dimensions. The blurring of image and object seems somehow contradictory to the incredible resolution and sharp focus of the video image and the smooth and seamless fabric on which it is projected. It is this focus and resolution that is at the heart of the illusion. The resolute quality of the image has surpassed the ability for the eye to deconstruct and disarm it. For this reason, there can be no "paying attention to the man behind the curtain". The irony in this is made quite clear when the viewer finally notices that the man is not hiding behind a curtain at all, but was in full view all along. Like any good magician, Oursler distracts the viewer from the nuts and bolts of the illusion by making the overt unignorable. The realization that the video projector and all its cabling and paraphernalia is actually foregrounded several feet in front of the doll yet somehow remains invisible is a shocking discovery for the viewer. Technology is usually so overt and annoyingly obtrusive, yet Tony Oursler manages to completely deny it's existence, if only for a short time.
Oursler has his way with our visual cortex for a very good reason. He must ensure that the viewer's mind is convinced just long enough to start to take the tiny cloth doll seriously as an entity, as an individual. Oursler wishes the viewer to identify with this tiny pseudo-virtual person, to acknowledge its woes and empathize with its pint-sized problems. The readily available inference is that the doll must be a metaphor for ourselves and how we are all mediated into being tiny insignificant bystanders vying for attention in the background of a crowd scene on the news during a papal visit. Oursler has the ability to generate and utilize characters that transcend the cinematic, the videographic and the virtual by doing more than any of these individual technologies can accomplish alone. The way Oursler can comment on media is to out-do it by creating a kind of "super-media" that encompasses and surpasses all its predecessors partially through an over-due divorce from the flat imaging screen and the melding of projected image with real objects. The critique of media seems then to be coming from inside of itself, as a type of self-critique, by having the art actually do the talking. The media itself finds that it has a voice, and the further anthropomorphization of the illusion reinforces the idea with a small helpless body in real space.
Those who would deny the amusing qualities of the small figure need only bring a Yorkshire Terrier or Chihuahua into the gallery to find the comparison uncanny. The attempts at ferocity and demanding vocality embodied in these tiny quivering packages are identical and similarly laughable. The initial smiles evoked by the work give way quickly to a faint guilty feeling like one had just been giggling at the less fortunate. The simultaneous and confusing reactions to the piece tend to draw attention to the psychological aspects of its effect on the viewer as one struggles to understand just why the work has elicited the reaction it has. Particularly, the psychological aspects of the way we see are brought into question with the obvious referenciality to visual media sources.
Seen in the context of other works in the show by such artists as Hans Bellmer, Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelly and Laurie Simmons the meaning becomes easier to read. There is a common motif used by all the artists in this group. All these artists use a dummy, or surrogate to embody or project a narrative of an otherwise disembodied voice. A voice masked as such that we do not recognize it immediately as our own.
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The advancements in technology have brought about curious changes in our understanding of the world that will surely only exponentially increase in the future. The revision of the paradigm of existence is constant. We have reached a crucial threshold where we can hypothesize and speculate about proponents of the paradigm which are beyond the boundaries of current physical perception using complex mathematics. The gap between the obvious and the physically inconceivable is an expansive chasm and is a great position in which to operate because there is tremendous freedom in the unknowable (or at least the currently unknowable).
Exploring the processes involved in the undetectable, the indecipherable, the hypothetical and the obscured may sound like a job for scientists and, indeed, there may be very little difference in the tasks done by artists and those done by scientists. The main difference being that an artist plays by rules determined by the individual and a scientist works with the rules common to the entire field. Regardless, each seeks to present information according to what they have found, whether it is the product of work or the product of play.
Like many scientists, it is the wonderment and curiosity experienced when learning or discovering something new that has always been a great motivator for me in art making. The final product, which may just appear as a remnant of the complex process involved, always seeks to convey this curiosity for the discovery of the hidden existence of the world.
In the recent past, exposure to a great deal of technology made me aware of its inescapable permeation. Through osmosis, I am forced to integrate it into my art making. The home computer multimedia revolution provides a unique opportunity for artists. In the same vein as my past bookworks, I can produce interactive works, but with a variety of different options left up to the viewer, including being able to view art without leaving the comfort and safety of your own cocoon. Ultimately, I foresee the integration of this current work into a CD ROM package in a cohesive, entertaining, and, interactive way using the loose ideas of the unknowable: the undetectable, the indecipherable, the hypothetical and the obscured .
The unseen, the unseeable, the lie, the unknown, the undesirable, the privileged, the chosen, the recognition, the community, the technology, the impossible, the suspected, the dismissed, the responsibility, the forgery, the naked, the unlikely, the trust, the poetic, the simplistic, the ridicule, the motives, the guilt, the reasoning, the unstable, the lineage, the questions. The Aliens.
In the early years of the space race, men were selected on the basis of their physical and mental attributes. Only the best, brightest, fittest and most stable-stomached individuals were able to pass the grueling tests and earn a mission patch for their uniform. It was my boyhood dream to become an astronaut.
This piece started with a postage stamp. The USPS issued a stamp series honouring monster movie actors including Boris Karloff. I was struck by the image of Boris as "The Mummy". I thought it curious that this image had come so far through time, space and culture. It had traversed meanings and purposes originating in ancient Egypt and survived the irreverent mutations of early Hollywood to earn a place in the pantheon of 20th century pop culture.