Page 103 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 103
on digital exposures
ing dead”. Looking at the movement of human figures in the recordings
one cannot but remember the maverick director George Romero‘s cult film
Night of the Living Dead (1968). So Viola’s installation in its ‘metaphysi-
cal’ dimension could be read as an internal visual interpretation or even as
a dialogue with the modernist mass-cultural iconography of the ultimate
zombie horror. The installation clearly suggests that such iconography be-
longs to the past since it exhausted its effectiveness belonging to the regis-
ter of the modernist techniques of single shocks. His usage of similar ico-
nography in another – digital – media takes, as he says himself, the “notion
of the dead coming back to our world” not as an emblem of evil, but as a re-
flection of the human condition. Therefore, Viola demonstrates a power of
digital imaging technology, albeit supplemented with laser and other de-
vices in the particular case, to define the space in which the installation is
created on a level, unthinkable before. This is not actually any return to the
‘pre-Benjaminian’ aesthetics, but it is a reminder that the ‘old’ aesthetics
can be brought to “our world – just temporarily”. Digital technology in this
way signals that the age of new Baroque is our contemporaneity.
Information Accelerator
Another case, among many other and undoubtedly innovative cases, of us-
age of digital technology, can be seen in the work of BridA, the group of
three younger artists: Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica and Tom Kerševan, who
belong to 21st Century researchers of meanings of art. They make use of
digital technology in order to expose contours of the post-industrial world.
Their installations and other objects can be surprisingly different as far as
their form is concerned. Some of them are kind of sculptures like a ‘giant’
Information accelerator which, being a composition of prefabricated tubes,
can be adapted to different spaces, but it is always interactive: the ‘accel-
erator’ after it is touched on some ‘control panels’ reacts with sounds and
smoke. Another type of BridA’s inventions is an artwork, which is generat-
ed with the willing public who put colours in the designated squares, fol-
lowing instructions through headphones. This work that directs visitors
not only to look, but also involve themselves in the implementation of an
artistic ‘master plan,’ is a clear case of a double exposure, which includes
movement between objects and subjects (visitors, most often children), who
are turned into instruments of the mechanics of BridA art. The work with
the title Change the Colour gives its name to the whole BridA’s exhibition,
which took place in the International Centre of Graphic Arts in May 2011
101
ing dead”. Looking at the movement of human figures in the recordings
one cannot but remember the maverick director George Romero‘s cult film
Night of the Living Dead (1968). So Viola’s installation in its ‘metaphysi-
cal’ dimension could be read as an internal visual interpretation or even as
a dialogue with the modernist mass-cultural iconography of the ultimate
zombie horror. The installation clearly suggests that such iconography be-
longs to the past since it exhausted its effectiveness belonging to the regis-
ter of the modernist techniques of single shocks. His usage of similar ico-
nography in another – digital – media takes, as he says himself, the “notion
of the dead coming back to our world” not as an emblem of evil, but as a re-
flection of the human condition. Therefore, Viola demonstrates a power of
digital imaging technology, albeit supplemented with laser and other de-
vices in the particular case, to define the space in which the installation is
created on a level, unthinkable before. This is not actually any return to the
‘pre-Benjaminian’ aesthetics, but it is a reminder that the ‘old’ aesthetics
can be brought to “our world – just temporarily”. Digital technology in this
way signals that the age of new Baroque is our contemporaneity.
Information Accelerator
Another case, among many other and undoubtedly innovative cases, of us-
age of digital technology, can be seen in the work of BridA, the group of
three younger artists: Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica and Tom Kerševan, who
belong to 21st Century researchers of meanings of art. They make use of
digital technology in order to expose contours of the post-industrial world.
Their installations and other objects can be surprisingly different as far as
their form is concerned. Some of them are kind of sculptures like a ‘giant’
Information accelerator which, being a composition of prefabricated tubes,
can be adapted to different spaces, but it is always interactive: the ‘accel-
erator’ after it is touched on some ‘control panels’ reacts with sounds and
smoke. Another type of BridA’s inventions is an artwork, which is generat-
ed with the willing public who put colours in the designated squares, fol-
lowing instructions through headphones. This work that directs visitors
not only to look, but also involve themselves in the implementation of an
artistic ‘master plan,’ is a clear case of a double exposure, which includes
movement between objects and subjects (visitors, most often children), who
are turned into instruments of the mechanics of BridA art. The work with
the title Change the Colour gives its name to the whole BridA’s exhibition,
which took place in the International Centre of Graphic Arts in May 2011
101
