Trace
The suite of print works entitled 'Trace', produced at RMIT University in Melbourne as part of an international artists in residency program in 2006, explores the nature of nomadic technology. 'Trace', infers a diverse spectrum of meaning: with notions of nomadic technology as iconic relics, symbolic and ritual tools and portals for liquid modernity.
The work incorporated graphite rubbings [visual residue] of nomadic technology devices such as mobile phones, USB/memory sticks and iPods enlarged and transferred onto photo sensitive copper plates, then etched and printed onto BK Rives paper.
In the printing of the suite the artist developed an innovative use of phosphorous photo-luminescent pigment. This was done by 'flocking' the prints with the pigment particles. The process involved dusting the inked image, and the particles then adhered to the wet ink. The prints themselves were then 'charged', by natural light or ultra violet light to reveal a 'glowing' ghost image lying across the surface. The 'charge' mirroring the need to power nomadic devices enabling them to function.
The use of phosphorous photo-luminescent pigment also supports the work as a reflection on the visceral relationship between visual stratification, fragmentation and meaning. As the work produced may be read as a physical and symbolic image.
The artist invited Dr. Philip Samartzis, course coordinator for Sound Art at RMIT to create a sonic installation for the exhibition 'Trace'. Dr Samartzis has organized three immersion festivals in Melbourne focusing on surround sound culture. His work explores the traction between site, sound and space.
The artists' role as a technological archaeologist excavating the present is of central importance in the creation of the suite. The work fluctuates between a contemporary reading of the technology and a possible future historical reading.
This work is influenced by Zygmunt Bauman's analysis of 'Liquid Modernity', Henderson's view of 'ritual tools', and Adriana de Souza e Silva's article on 'From Static to Mobile Interfaces'. These three texts converge to inform and decode 'Trace'.
'The emergence of nomadic technology devices allows whole cities to be used as a 'responsive surface', or as a game board. It is as though the urban space has become a map of itself, a place for interaction and long distance contact, without the need for a restricted or fixed space'. Adriana de Souza e Silva, (2004)
It is agreed that the emergence of nomadic technology devices have changed our engagement with our environment. Transforming social and geo /physical relationships. The boundaries between private and public space have been blurred by the element of mobility. This array of technological devices proposes liberation from time, space and matter.
Bauman's (2000, p.25) concept of, 'Liquid Modernity' comments on how we have moved away from a 'heavy' and 'solid', hardware - focused modernity to a 'light' and 'liquid', software - based modernity.
The fragmentation within the rubbings of the objects supports this view by causing a shift in the solidity of the object, inviting an expansive interpretation of the work by the viewer.
Within 'Trace', the 'enlightened' visual residue of the images flicker and melt into darkness. They hold an ethereal quality about them. The interaction of transformative light and darkness present a playful quality to the work. The nomadic technology devices explored are all transformative devices, transforming into sound waves and held in ether. They become a portal from the physical plane to digital space.
One definition of 'Trace', considered as 'a mark, object, or other indication of the existence or passing of something' (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 2002, p.1517), is pertinent to the work, in relation to its reading as an archaeological relic of technology. The effusion of light also mirroring the concept of a 'Sudarium' which in latin means 'miraculous' image.
The visual residue and fragmentation also conceals the objects functionality so that the object is seen as a 'ritual' or 'symbolic' tool. Henderson (1999, p.190 ) suggests that high technology tools are imbued with 'technological ritual'.
'The aura of a high-technology designation delegates a certain kind of status to a tool or technique and hence renders products and processes so named as symbolic tools recognized more for the status they confer on their users, owners and makers than for their actual function in getting work done...Symbolic tools bestow power and status on their possessors not because of their functional capability but because of their status as special objects from special sources and special places within the fabric of the social network including its hierarchy, lineage and history'. (Henderson pp.190-191)
This work represents a continued exploration into the visceral relationship between technology and self. Inverting the solidity of nomadic technology in order to filter reality, to expose what lies beneath.
Bibliography
- Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2000.
- Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 10th ed. Pearsall, J., et al.,Oxford University Press 2002.
- De Souza e Silva, Adriana, Art By Telephone: From Static to Mobile Interfaces. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, vol.12, no.10, 2004.
- Henderson, Kathryn, On Line and on Paper Visual Representations, Visual Culture, and Computer Graphics in Design Engineering. MIT Press, Cambridge,1999.