- Venue
- De La Warr Pavilion
- Location
- South East England
Is it possible to comment on the output of ‘an artist working with digital media’ without referring to the techniques of production? The question applies to a degree with any genre, to those dealing with ‘traditional’ media too. Of course it is reasonable to ask about the way things were made, people often do, but regardless of how interesting, skilful, complex or alternatively, regardless of how simple, collaborative or amateurish the methods employed, are the results not a separate matter entirely? Technology and media artists are more frequently faced with the problem of an audience being interested only in craft aspects or their technical wizardry.
On a guided tour of Susan Collins’ exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion one of the group probed as to why a certain print looked pixelated. This query revealed ignorance about the nature of the work on show – all the imagery there was of a similar low resolution – compounded when the same person recommended solutions using Photoshop. Probably this was simply an attempt to get connversation going: some feel a need to join-in. She and the others of us present were clearly impressed on other levels. Attempts at interpretation don’t necessarily help a person in trusting their own perceptions.
And at this show (in my opinion) it was not compulsory to worry about the background schemes at play. That’s not to say that these processes weren’t interesting but the experience of the space itself, in carrying the particular content seemed both exhilarating and (unfashionably) consoling. Borderline sublime, minimalist and distinctly pre-post-modern sentiments combined there with impact. A selection of prints and moving image (if web-cam footage can be described as such) presented at the same aspect ratios but on a variety of different scales occupied the gallery so that any one picture could be appreciated in its own right but the exhibition as a whole amounted to more than the sum of its parts.
A popular favourite appeared to be the work entitled ‘Folkstone, 31st October 2008 at 15.30’. Like the other prints this is a visible grid of square pixels but from further away the horizontal order dominates presenting something to the spectator which is abstract and at once corresponds to the seascape subject matter it was based upon. I understand now how the images were created (and a lot less about how individual pictures for the show were selected from the mass of material accumulated) but deliberately spent significant time with the work before educating myself on this front. The fact that each picture represents about six hours of capture time and that individual pixel updates arrived at an average rate but fluctuated around this depending on connection speeds and the precise results depended on other characteristics of the network, the algorithms at work and the web-cams in use; these are only elements in the story.
Collins’ system was most vividly demonstrated in the five projections of ‘live’ footage from web-cams mounted at specific locations along the South Coast. The fact that the screens were hung just in front of the glass panes facing out to the sea at Bexhill meant that, when viewing, the actual horizon aligned closely to image horizon lines (or precisely for someone of a certain height, maybe the artist herself?). Unconscious comparisons between digitized reality and what is visible through the windows are unavoidable. I wondered about how perspective is palpable in all the work displayed despite the relative purity and potential flatness of the subject matter being captured. Low resolution web-cam footage has the advantage undoubtedly of revealing an essential component in seascape: the shrinking series of horizontals as the lower section of each image approaches the upper section of sky.
Collins in her presentation here abided by certain modernist principles, in refusing to delude the spectator and revealing the workings of image making techniques for example and secondly the exhibition evoked memories of a Donald Judd or Rothko say. Systems invented by the likes of the Boyle Family in the past and the films of Tacita Dean in more recent history are possible places to go for comparison also. For sure earnestness prevailed; no jokes punctured the equilibrium in Bexhill. Which is uncommon, a relief, though I can’t help but ponder the possibility of injecting a dose of silliness. What if suddenly into the frame of the camera pointed at Margate appeared Tracy Emin saying ‘ello’ or if the artist employed the visitor mentioned above to somehow correct each of the thousands (or millions?) of low resolution images collected using Photoshop filters? Susan Collins’ selecting, her aesthetic override and direction mean that Seascape cannot be summed up simply as Generative or Systems Art. We are taken into a realm beyond such easy categorization. Presumably there’ll come a time too when it’s unnecessary to separate out art which has digital connotations from art which does not.
