Re-Composing the Digital Present
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 2011, v. 1, pp. 88-104
Tmothy Barker investigates the temporality that is produced in some recent and historical examples of media art. In exploring works by Janet Cardiff, Dennis Del Favero, and Omer Fast, Barker uses the philosophy of Michel Serres and Gilles Deleuze to understand the convergence of temporalities that are composed in the digital present, as one moment in time overlays another moment. Developing Serres' concept of multi-temporality and Deleuze's philosophy of time and memory into a means to understand the non-linear time presented in these works, Barker argues that the different compositional strategies enacted by these artists provide the aesthetic grounding to experience “temporal thickness.” Barker then goes on to investigate the interactive digital artworks Frames by Grahame Weinbren and Can You See Me Now? by the artist group Blast Theory. In this investigation, Barker understands interaction with technology, and the way that it shapes our sensory and processual experience, as a specifically temporal and temporalizing transaction, where human movements in the present are overlayed by technological processes.
ITEM 2011.084 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Her Long Black Hair – Janet Cardiff
Magnesium Light – Del Favero
You and I – Del Favero
Hold Me – Del Favero
The Casting – Omer Fast
Frames – Grahame Weinbren
Can You See Me Now? – Blast Theory