Martin Perring

BA Fine Art

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It’s been ten years since the Kodak ceased production of its Carousel projector. During this time the boundaries between digital and material spaces have become increasingly less clear. With the advent of the 3d printer making this increasingly clear, as we now have the ability to transform virtual worlds of the imagination into touchable material things. Martin Perring’s piece Digital Dissonance asks the question of how these virtual objects of repetition compare to the tactile nature and biographical proprieties of the 35mm slide, as these repetitive images based on digital code replace material ageing copies.  Through the addition of the uncanny face forms, the piece also questions what effects these recent transformations have on the way others are viewed. Warning us that due to the lack of a visible distinction between the digital and material we risk confusing our hollow online avatars for our more complex, un-programmed personalities.

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A 3d object is meant to be representative of our material world. Going beyond a flat drawing it replicates an actual physical object. But what then is the grey space found in a 3d modeling program? It does not exist in any material format, the information that is creating such a landscape is simply a series of binary pulses, yet it plays out in a seemingly endless space. This is a space of our imagination, a materially hidden space that yet is almost interacted with as if it was a physical space.

The space in a 3d modeler is interesting in the way it mimics something like a film set, where you move the camera around and position the lighting. But it also tries to combine it with the endless grey space of possibility, and it has the aesthetic of modelling clay in the 3d structures. New technology always seems to uses previous iconography in its structures. As if the virtual needs an entry point and replicate what exists then become something truly unique. 

The most obvious conceptual connotation to be made from this piece is that of a capitalist production line where we become tools to keep on creating more commodified objects. Although I am welcome to this interpretation, and I am utilizing this semiotic understanding, I wish to be more subtle then that. 

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Martin Perring, gif#1, 2014.

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SKYPE AND BAULDRILLARD

I have a new blog at: http://martinperring.wordpress.com/

I shall post the first entry here as it was inspired by a scrapy piece of writing I wrote on here:

The online virtual post-internet world we now live in has changed the way we communicate. We have replaced long distance written communication to vocal and now visual communication. What I shall focus on is the new tool Skype, and the potentially negative consequences this has. As imagination is replaced by image.

We shall start by taking the analogy of  of the digital camera in Baudrillards book “Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?“. Here he explains that the digital cameras functions by transforming a reflected image into data and then this collected data is used to recreate an image on screen. In summery his argument is that we no longer have an image but a replica of an image which has the same properties as the original. But this copy is not genuinely the same thing as the original, as it doesn’t change or age it just repeats. He uses this analogy to explain his belief that society has likewise become an replica of its self. But skype and and webcam based technology takes this analogy a step further. Skype creates the illusion of face to face conversation when actually it is merely a replica. A collection of code to represent the face of your distant friend.

The Skype conversation, that is focused on coded image is limiting. Ones eyes are not free to roam around, touch is of course out of the question. Even feelings such as anger no longer fill the conversation. Emotion has a presence and cannot so easily be replicated by a flat 2d image. At most you will receive a faint shadow of true emotion. Skype aims to mimic face to face conversation but lacks the physicality to truly be more then a poor substitute. It is a replica that attempts to have the same qualities of the original but is not the same as the original. When you find your self in a new place these conversation tools can become alienating. It encourages you to have a bad replica of a conversation with someone you know, rather then seeking a real conversation with someone you do not.

But the true social risk found in Skype is the control one can exert over it. In a genuine three dimensional conversation one can only control there perception to a certain extent. An interview is effective because although there is an illusion aspect to the proceedings, this illusion is some form of game that the participants are aware they are involved in. They are actively presenting themselves in a positive way. The knowledge of this game gives the interview an subtext. Where the participants try to find certain information through the way the others maintain their illusion. This phenomenon is also found in dating and even in day to day conversation to a lesser extent.

Where Skype differs is in its two dimensional aspect. The body language on show can easily be hidden, and barley exists at all. It acts within a frame where you position yourself within a box. The onlooker has no choice in where to look at you. You are positioning yourself into a flat frame. At no point during a conversation on Skype do you look into the others eyes. To do so would require both participants to stare directly into the webcam. The webcam becomes the others eye. You can tell it where to look. This is where Skype becomes less personal then the other means of long distance communication. By attempting to mimic face to face conversation it becomes a bad copy of it, and one that should not be mistaken as any less far away from it, then other forms of long distance communication.

Why Skype can be worse then other forms of long distance communication is because it attempts at being a replica. All the imagination of a phone call or letter is gone. During a letter or phone call one fills the lack of image with memories. The sole voice in a phone call can trigger an imagination of the body language and eye contact found within a conversation. In Skype the personality one fills in through a phone call is replaced by a bad replica of communication.

The good thing is that unlike the digital camera it is obvious that Skype is not face to face conversation. It replaces the phone or letter not all conversation. But the technological drive to make long distance conversation more like face to face conversation sets a bad precedent. Bauldrillards nightmare is the point where the two become indistinguishable. Where the illusion of face to face conversation has become so good that it is unnoticeable. Then distance ceases to matter. What is real or not becomes a moot point. At that point the meaning of face to face conversation disappears. Our reality is replaced with a new one, a perfect replica of one.

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Barcelona 2. For some photos I brought the photoshop to an extreme level. This created distortions in the colours, I thought that perhaps more obviously photoshoped images, with bits of corruption, will bring attention to the extent of photo manipulation.  

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Barcelona 1. I recently got a new digital camera. It was fun to take photos of Gaudis architecture. Photoshop enables you to edit reality to reflect the essence of the experience. The sharper colours truly reflecting the way you feel when approaching these monuments. However there are negatives that are created through this process. As the sharper images that we are bombarded with everyday risk desensitizing us to the subtler beauty that can be found in the grimiest city. A photograph is ultimately an image and has always been a different thing to the actual perceptions of objects. I feel its important for people to realize these distinctions, a photograph is like a painting, it is a creator of experience, rather then being an objective representation            

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Images created through the corruption of google maps. 

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Digitally rendered faces through Facebook images. The images came across as twisted and corrupt a testament to the quality of Facebook 'Profile Pics'. The concept is to reflect the 'bad copies' of our selves that are created online through the data we have given out. The numbers reflect the joining date and are used to enforce the point.  

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Post Internet and the Uncanny

Without conscious thought the idea of the uncanny has began creeping into my work. A face rendered through Facebook imagery has a vague resemblance to the image of the person but enough difference to make something scary. What point is this making? Does this eerie familiarity have a connection to our digital reflections? One could not argue that facebook is a particularly uncomfortable technology to one of a social disposition. If I am honest with myself I used the uncanny in order to cause a feeling of dissonance. To try to build upon the idea that virtual copies of our selves exist. This is almost mythical metaphorical interpretation on digital reality.

In Melissa Gronlund essay on eflux, Return of the Gothic: Digital Anxiety in the Domestic Sphere, she makes a connection between the gothic novels and post Internet artists looking at the ‘otherness’ of new technology. She goes onto claim that ‘A similar substrate of anxiety and domestic disruption can be found in recent moving image work. Their reappearance or re-conjuring in these settings suggests a return of the gothic as a way to wrestle with daunting, ongoing questions prompted by current technological shifts: How has the internet affected our sense of self? Our interactions with others? The structures of family and kindship?’ She refers on how post Internet art often uses the ‘gothic tropes of the uncanny’. Perhaps it is not unusual for my work to have an uncanny element to it, after all much of online technology is similar to offline life minus a couple of significant differences. Ed Atkins, Wendy Vainity and Mark Leckey all could be called post Internet artists and all use the uncanny to cause an unsettling effect in their work. But I think the major difference between gothic literature and post Internet art that Gronlund fails to mention is that there was a genuine public fear of technology in the 1800s there is not one now despite diminishing privacy and the massive amount of information that is now being stored. The public reaction NSA scandal was one closer to apathy then to fear. I believe the trend towards the uncanny has more to do with the personification of the inanimate used to highlight and bring to the public attention the questions about online identity or perhaps simply as an attempt to bring more mythos into the world through the magical nature of the virtual.      

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Martin Perring: Video Art | Datafication

Just put up an interview for the Streaming Festival. Have a read!

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These are photos for a 3 minute video I have done.

Due to the advent of new online technology we are no longer just consumers but have also become what is being consumed. In exchange for free services we have become the product. This is seen through the datafication of our preferences and cultural interests, enabling such information to be sold to private companies. This modern phenomenon found in social media has not only changed the nature of consumption but also the way we present ourselves.

When we display our cultural interests, the films we have watched; the music we like and the exhibitions we have been to, we are creating a representation of ourselves. This representation is then used as a method to compare ourselves to our peers. It is also used as a tool to judge our potential interests by corporations, thus turning our interests into commodities. Therefore Culture has become quantifiable, a superficial tool used to judge our social position.

Other themes this piece deals with is the fear of virtual reality and its integration into perceived reality as well as how face to face communication is increasingly being replaced by social media, which is ultimately a series of images.

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I set up an happening in order to question the nature of social spaces and the sphere art partakes in.

The questions I am asking are as follows:

1. Does the artist have the power to claim any action as art.

2. If so does the artist have a right to claim them as his art. All art is collective after all. Ideas are often inspired through conversations with others and now it is often made by others. Who's work is it?

3. Making people aware of unwritten social rules (like the rules in an art space). Questioning whether an by setting out new rules these can be replaced.

4. Collectivism v Individualism 

As seen on the table, through out this event I made markings to show where people left objects. I liked the idea of marking peoples previous movements. To show the way people unintentional interact with each other. 

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Aselection of some of my corrupted photos. This piece is an extension of  Jean Baudrillard analogy of photography in order to reflect his ideas of simulacrum and how a digital photograph no longer has a physical reality it is just a bunch of data that can be destroyed at will leaving no imprints. I collected number plates found by passing cars on the streets the photos where taken this reflects the transformation of perception through the datafication of experience.

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Arival into Karlsruhe - Thoughts on Hyper-Reality.

I have been homeless floating between youth hostels and looking at houses, im even going to couch surf a bit tomorrow. Yet the weathers been good so I am in high spirits. Since coming here (and still being friendless) I have retained virtual communication with people back home. Perhaps more then ever before to take place of my dwindling personal communication.

Skype, has come to interest me perhaps the most. If we take Baudrillards book "Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?" analogy of the digital camera in how by transforming image into data which then recreates the image on screen we no longer have an image but a replica of an image which has the same properties as an image but does not have an genuine reality; It doesn't change or age it just repeats.

He of course uses this analogy to explain his belief that society has become an replica of its self. But skype and and web cam based communication describes this more so. It creates the illusion of contact when actually it is merely a replica coded image which then appears on another screen this might cause a lack the freer interpretation of 3d sight, where you can wonder around with your eyes as well as communicate through touch where Maurice Merleau-Ponty would argue that feelings such as anger are there in between the people in the conversation. In a digital conversation are those feelings still in the conversation? I think all you get is a replica or maybe more of a reflection. Where it mimics a conversation but does not quite achieve the same contact as conversing in person would.

I feel that these conversation tools can become alienating it enables me to communicate as if they are here rather then going out looking for conversation. It is also an act within a frame where you posing for a camera positioning your self with in a box, where the onlooker has no choice in where to look at you. I think this is best highlighted by the fact no one looks into each others eyes. They look at the screen not the web cam. It seems really stupid to look into a camera rather then a persons eyes. Its less personal then a phone call where memories fill in the gaps and at least you remember how that person means and is to you. Through a web cam your forced to talk to a person through an image.

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Automatic text suggested by google when typing in the original phrase. This is an interesting mix of a public and private space and a collective conscious. People are revealing their most private thoughts and worries on one of the biggest data platforms in the world. It asks us questions of where the boundaries between public and private space now are.  

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My work submitted for the exhibition "Espy".

1. R.Mutt is written across a trough placed at waist height to mimic a urinal. This asks questions on the continued relevance of Duchamp.

2. A box torn into several pieces to show the production marks and rotting insides of a well glazed rather tacky piece of wood. An photo to mark a negative space, and a framed photo of London add to a wide verity of semiotic connotations. An attempt of seeing in new perspectives.