Man Made, interactive video paintings


videopaintings7

Man Made, Index 800, 2013-2016
Chinese ink, rice paper, interactive video, webcams, computer, max-msp/jitter programming

Did we already surpass the limit of growth? Have we exhausted Earth just in time to revert into virtual or outer space? Must catastrophe be embedded in progress?  If there is such destruction caused by industrialism, how can we still call it progress? We can now boast of creating the sky, albeit much greyer, poisonous and sinister looking than depicted in an impressionist painting.  If planes spray barium or aluminum oxide above cities one can experience the refreshed blue skies, a respite from one poison in exchange for another poison. More and more our space in time is resembling an apocalyptic Bruegel.

Slow destruction of our air captured with ink on paper with video. Footprints rhythmically dance on rice paper creating billows of smoke, a dense layer of lightened black traces. Landscapes of foreboding capacity with hints of light shining through. They are not completely hopeless.  Tourists mindlessly consuming and stopping to take pictures are metaphors for our passive carelessness of our environment. The video projected onto the paintings appear as abstract movement that resemble clouds or billows of exhaust. As the viewer comes closer to the painting the video sharpens to reveal tourists taking pictures seemingly of the onlooker. Subject become voyeur, and voyeur becomes subject in between catastrophe.

This project was conceived and produced during a residency in Beijing 2013.