Digital Bodies: Notes on the transition from the digital to the physical (and back again)
Reuten Gallery Amsterdam, September 2 – October 7, 2006
Participating artists:
Geert Dekkers (NL), Foofwa d’Imbolité (CH), Mogens Jacobsen (DK), Jan Robert Leegte(NL), Alan Sondheim (USA)
Most digital art works are to be experienced through the well-known output/input devices. Interaction consists of user input through mouse and keyboard, output through the computer screen. The visual properties of the output/input devices present the universe of industrial design, yet in the art gallery, they are presented within the same contextual space as a classical art object. A feeling of incompatibility arises in the juxtaposition of these two universes. Our experience of digital art in the exhibition space is inhibited by this conflict. This is the starting point for the project “Digital Bodies”.
The works in “Digital Bodies” are chosen to show the transition from the digital to the physical, from the idea to the realization. They are the physical manifestation of the digital. The sculptural presence of these works is such that they are able to be contextualized by the art gallery. The “and back again” in the subtitle is added because the passage we’re talking about is not one-way. The digital feeds the physical, the physical feeds the digital. “Digital Bodies” is to be seen as a metaphor for the the passage from “the idea” to “the implementation”. In presenting “Digital Bodies” we hope to add to the metaphor of the spirit/body dualism.
Foofwa d’Imbolité uses the avatar metaphor in his choreography, at times quite literally derived from computer programs like Maya. In “Body Toy”, he plays the (computer) avatar, whose body movements are at times very unlike human movements. Alan Sondheim connects to the avatar theme in very many ways, in his writing, but also in his visual and auditory experiments wherein he prepares his collaboration with Foofwa. Mogens Jacobsens “I Hear Denmark Singing” uses the well-known potato battery to power the computer in the installation. Jan Robert Leegte takes visual elements of the computer user interface to build engaging sculptures in the gallery space. And in Geert Dekkers’ work, the stream of ideas that the thoroughly fictional “nznl.com exhibition hall” consists of has taken on physical guise.
The project will consist of a gallery show at Reuten Gallery, Amsterdam. A compact version of the Alan Sondheim installation and a screening of Foofwa’s Body Toy will be shown at Track 16, Los Angeles, USA (See also http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/002490.html).