December 08, 2005
b-l-u-e-s-c-r-e-e-n
transversalMemory
transversalMemory Performance Instance #04: France, Lyon, Friche_RVI; Algorithm & Pix :: BlueScreen | Sound :: Julien Clauss | Light :: Karim; 2005.12.10_21h00 [december 10]
As one takes a photograph with a digital camera, a different name is given to each photograph by the camera. The form of this name is specific to the camera model. It usually comes as a an alphanumeric characters series which includes the camera model reference and a number identifying each image.
Whether they are intended to be publicly displayed, exchanged in a private or restricted context, or to be stocked, a large amount of these photographs end up being accessible on the internet, without the photographer even being aware sometimes. For each photograph we take, it is then possible to find on the net its twin images, that is to say photographs taken somewhere on the planet with a similar camera and bearing the very same name.
The transverse memory performance intends to connect a photograph taken at a given time and place with its twin images collected in real time on the internet. Once the photograph is taken in situ and through this photograph, an image of the place is projected ; a robot begins a silent exploration of the network, searching for images bearing the same name. These images gradually mingle one with the other without ever replacing the initial photo or being fully identifiable, thus opening spaces for the viewers mental journeys.
From the original image, we progressively slip mentally towards a succession of new situations, carried by the appearance and changing of different images mingling. The process taking place seems to bring to the foreground an imperceptible and imaginary dimension of the performance physical location. A dimension which stands somewhere between a fictitious past and a remote present. Even though no sense can clearly be established by what is given to see, the shift of the situations led by the atmospheres arising from the mixing of those images is an invitation to reverie, to the construction of a narration based upon the viewer's perception and individual sensitivity. Potential situations thus take shape, open fragments of narration carried out by the ability this process possibly holds to reveal, through the photography, a poetic and impalpable story of the place we are watching. It is only after a certain time, as we begin to sense the image through which it all started again, that we realise we had been carried away from it. We then have the strange feeling we are returning to a certain reality...
Posted by jo at December 8, 2005 10:02 AM
