The figure in digital
Over the last century our eyes learnt their trade from the cinema – the mise-en-scene, the close-up, lingering on a detail hidden from others or perhaps resting where no one is really meant to look. Cinema changed how we saw and what we felt allowed or able to see. Mark Lewis, the filmmaker as opposed to the character in Leo Marks’ film Peeping Tom, talks of the pathology of the cinematic gaze, and a sadistic impulse inherent in the movie-viewing process. The Mark Lewis of Peeping Tom makes this very clear – his morbid desire to gaze is taken to murderous conclusion. Cinema not only offers liberation but can also make life worse as it skews our expectations. The world presented on screen can alienate us from real life.
As our personalities are constructions, we are vulnerable, for we watch and learn and imitate. Over the twentieth century our ‘selves’ have become increasingly populated with the character of fictional others. One result seems to be an increased desire for knowledge and secrets, a drive that manifests itself, perversely, through the desire to look. The eye becomes a camera that shifts and focuses. It shifts and stops when and where at will, offering detail and attention according to its own agenda.
So, what happens when that eye leans ever closer into the screen and begins to watch and learn from the digital? All bets are off. What we see can have been reconfigured and reimagined in any number of ways. There is no need for truth, logic or limits.
In the first of a series of curated shows, Greg Rook Advisory approached contemporary artists and discussed reimagining their work as NFTs. Some were already invested, and some were initially wary, but it was immediately obvious that this platform for sharing digital work could open up possibilities for innovative thought. Where digital work might previously have languished on so many hard drives, it now had an outlet and an audience. The artists became enthused to create new work that was as much a part of their artistic practice as anything else they would put out in the world. Considering traditional notions of portraiture and the figure they looked again at how digital art and animation could reframe their thinking.
Curator:
Greg Rook is a UK based artist and art advisor.
www.gregrookadvisory.com
www.gregrook.co.uk
A lot of what I’m about to tell you is made up.
July 9 - August 13, 2021
https://superrare.com/features/a-lot-of-what-im-about-to-tell-you-is-made-up
Douglas White, Oracle, 2021
https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/oracle-26054