versions of versions / 2016

Pearce Gallery – Auckland, New Zealand

In Edward de Bono’s book The Use of Lateral Thinking he describes the importance of language in the process of understanding a situation. He use the analogy of taking apart a large machine in order to reconstruct it else where as mode of translation, where the parts of the whole are broken up into their constituent elements. Applying this theory to our understanding of the visual form, where “no single word can be used to describe” the aggregation of our multiplicities he describes that a “visual situation takes the form of a figure which is simple yet unfamiliar” and that within this moment our observations are directed to only a small part of the situation.

Much like the zoetropes of pre-film motion sequencing, it is this visual illusion which is associated with the persistence of vision where multiple images blend into a single moving image to trick the brain into perceiving a sense of motion. In our increasingly connected lives we are perpetually creating and distributing information in the form of images. Images which act as a bridge between our physical and virtual worlds and are mediated by the screens of our digital devices. Here our online engagement becomes a truncated amalgamation of collected moments and where our perception is employed to help us define the situations we encounter.

In a similar way to de Bono’s machine analogy, these works aim to reflect on how certain data within our digital environments triggers our visual engagement and to question the attention we accord to one set of information over another. Individually they tell a story of connections, the propagation of information, light and modes of exchange. They are distinct iterations of the same question, inquires into the space that exists between the transference from analogue to digital, a copy of a copy or a rendition of an earlier version. Collectively they can be seen as interventions within the gallery space and as the viewer encounters each piece they build a perceptual map of information as they move from one mediation to the next.

Employing the conventions and tools of digital engagement these works aim to open up questions of how images and information behave in our digital environments, how the 'analogue' defines our relationship with our digital universe and to ask how complicit we might be as labourers within our new digital economies.

list of works :

/ a binary loop - 2106
/ data-farms and the collapsing of air - 2016
/ a sensitive issue - 2016
/ pong - 2016
/ the liminal presence of ambiguous perceptual fields v.2 - 2016
/ a fractured sky - 2016