Jack De Lacy

Veil is a CGI self portrait printed onto synthetic silk. Continuing my first assessment, I’ve looked at ideas of visibility and power, examining concealment as a rebellious method of reclaiming compromised personal freedoms.

Veil responds to Hito Steyerl’s How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File. In particular, I respond to her instructional lesson;

“How to Become Invisible by Merging into a World Made of Pictures.”[1]

Among the visual content of the work there are original photographs, drawings, CGI models and selfies as well as spam imagery, text and internet debris. The images within Veil acknowledge an inundation of images in the world, and a culture of intensified engagement with those images. I consider the photographic gaze to be ubiquitous in a way that constitutes control. Ayesha Siddiqi simply puts it, “Visibility in a surveillance state is not power.”[2] Veil examines obsessions with self-representation, stemming from my own love of cat-eared-funny-hat-tropical-paradise filtered selfies, and their potential to undermine personal freedom.

Byung-Chul Han writes that “Today the entire globe is developing into a panopticon. There is no outside space. The panopticon is becoming total. No wall separates inside from outside. Google and social networks, which present themselves as spaces of freedom, are assuming panoptic forms. Today surveillance is not occurring as an attack on freedom, as is normally assumed. Instead, people are voluntarily surrendering to the panoptic gaze.”[3]

I was really inspired by Kate Cooper’s work 'We Need Sanctuary' in The Public Body 3[4] at Artspace. Her artist statement spoke about “the potential for computer-generated images… as entities with a logic of their own.” This statement was really relevant to my own work. I characterise CGI aesthetics as being liberative from the systems of surveillance and control manifest in cyber-spaces.

CGI acknowledges and exists within the very image-inundation that enacts social control. It remains liberative because of it’s potential to speculate and obscure representation. Veil, in it’s CGI presentation, responds to desires for invisibility in “an age of total over-visibility.”[5] Through an involvement in technologies of image generation, I attempt to mystify self-representation.

I want the work to function as a veil,

a veil;

• a piece of fine material worn by women to protect or conceal the face.

• a thing that conceals, disguises, or obscures something: shrouded in an eerie veil of mist.

• (in Jewish antiquity) the piece of precious cloth separating the sanctuary from the body of the Temple or the Tabernacle.

•(botany) a membrane which is attached to the immature fruiting body of some toadstools and ruptures in the course of development…

My veil is a fly screen of ideology, a blanket for thought, a shield from outside, a concealer for in. Veil refers to a sanctified inward space, implied yet beyond representation, where identity can exist, unmediated.

I was inspired by Mikala Dwyer’s soft sculptural flags series, which demarcated movement through her ‘Soft Relics’ exhibition,[6] yet didn’t assert a physical presence. Rather, they implied movement and transience whilst alluding to an unseen presence. Whilst not making work about surveillance or invisibility, Dwyer’s practice informed the way that I approached indirectly representing myself. Rather than being represented by the work; I’d say my identity is placed into proximity with it.

I had never done 3D modelling before, and there was a lot of experimentation with new software. In my final work I used Abode Illustrator, Photoshop and Autodesk Fusion 360. These different softwares are varied, and have differing intended uses. It’s important to think about how construction, engineering, design, and art collide in these technologies. Furthermore, the work was printed on synthetic silk at a fashion fabrics factory. Veil is made using processes that allude to varying industries of aesthetics, in a way that harnesses identity in a mutable, aperspectival, and non-committal manner.

Ultimately this work responds to transparency. Byung-Chul Han acknowledges that invasive cultures of surveillance result in a kind of negative transparency. He writes that “Transparent communication is communication that has a smoothing and leveling effect. It leads to synchronization … transparency stabilizes the dominant system.”[7]

Veil challenges systems of over-visibility, to reclaim personal transparency, not inflecting “easiness to perceive or detect,” but as a mode of being unseen, “allowing light to pass through.”[8]

  [1] How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (view online) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE3RlrVEyuo

[2] Ayesha Siddiqi. Conference proceedings, “Superscript,” May 29, 2015. The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Available online: https://walkerart.org/magazine/superscript-2015-ayesha-siddiqi

[3] Han, B. and Butler, E. (2012). The transparency society. Stanford university press, p.62

[4] Linz, T. (2018). THE PUBLIC BODY .03. [online] Artspace.org.au. Available at: https://www.artspace.org.au/program/exhibitions/2018/the-public-body-03/ [Accessed 31 Aug. 2018].

[5] Steyerl, H. Kunak, G. (2013) Hito Steyerl: Zero Probability and the Age of Mass Art Production, interview by Göksu Kunak. [online] Berlin Art Link. Available at: http://www.berlinartlink.com/2013/11/19/interview-hito-steyerl-zero-probability-and-the-age-of-mass-art-production/

[6] http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/285/Mikala_Dwyer/1873/

[7] Han, B. and Butler, E. (2012). The transparency society. Stanford university press, p. viii

texture samplez 

a quote i been thinking about

assessment 2 experiment 6

continued visual experiments around “Merging with a world of images.”

interested in pictures that refer to an inward space (inner space being the content of the images?) in which identity can be placed. I think it could be seen as personally comprising to directly represent identity (see; rising tensions around transparency and visibility thru social media et. generation of projection.)

Instead I want to create images that protect (from the outside) and nourish (thru inward fabrication) from the inside.

In this way I want my images to be seen as veils of identity. Here are some definitions of veil 4 ur consideration;

veil:

•a piece of fine material worn by women to protect or conceal the face

• a thing that conceals, disguises, or obscures something: shrouded in an eerie veil of mist.

• (in Jewish antiquity) the piece of precious cloth separating the sanctuary from the body of the Temple or the Tabernacle.

•Botany a membrane which is attached to the immature fruiting body of some toadstools and ruptures in the course of

here is a quote by Byung-Chul Han that contextualises my desires to place myself within a ‘veil,’ perhaps of separation?

“As total communication and total networking run their course, it proves harder than ever to be an outsider, to hold a different opinion. Transparent communication is communication that has a smoothing and leveling effect. It leads to synchronization and uniformity. It eliminates Otherness. Compulsive conformity proceeds from transparency. In this way, transparency stabilizes the dominant system.”[1]

assessment 2 experiment 5.

getting better w overlaying imagery onto models, also learning how to move limbs around etc.

Interested in the uncanny and manifestations of online debris or waste and how visual coherence can be kindled thru the uneasy / unsettling. 

there’s something really funny about being ultra crass with this software, bc i find it really hard to use. Takes me like an hour to set everything up just to write ‘big fuck’ and draw a dick.

https://www.artspace.org.au/program/exhibitions/2018/the-public-body-03/

the other night I went to the opening of The public Body 03 at Art space. It presented the body as detached / alienated from physical properties, instead residing in spiritual, virtual and cultural spaces.

Kate Cooper made work about “the potential for computer-generated images... as entities with a logic of their own.” She considered “immaterial labour” and the transfer of meaning (identity?) between our images, networks and our bodies. This seems to re-categorize my own thoughts about my work, where i had initially planned to create images that hide, obscure or imply personhood, instead I want to now represent images as embodied. Not too sure how to resolve this.

Other artists I really liked where Jess Johnson, who created a wallpaper (something I was considering in assessment 1.)  Tabita Rezaire’s work Premium Connect was probably my personal favourite in the way it drew together narratives of cultural spirituality and cyber culture (and cultural modes of distribution) into a really interesting video essay. 

assessment 2 experiment 4

Downloaded an open-source robotic arms to wave a drawing like a flag.

mainly just teaching myself the software. 

assessment 2 experiment 3

https://youtu.be/GHCyUrq4GhU 

Created a 3d scan of myself, that I then textured the surface of with one of my drawings. I then downloaded open source arms, a body and a gun to make my character wholly embodied. 

I had myself standing on debris. I am interested in debris as a space within which meaning could be re-couped (the anti-space of significance??) 

My second experiment is this video: https://youtu.be/boUJ3L1A4y4

It is called ‘the guts of my mums iPhone’ and is a series of overlaid screen-capture videos of some 3d models I made this week, set to the aspect ratio of an iPhone 5.

As an extension of ‘merging into a world of images’ I thought it would be interesting to look at imagery that is referential to external forms, or images that imply a space within (where perhaps I could be?)

the imagery is made to be shiny and sleek, yet technical, mechanic. Looks like a romantic boiler room or the inner workings of technology, yet is obviously aesthetic, denying any realities of actual form. I like that about this experiment, it serves to obscure interpretation by providing a clear structure for interpretation. 

I think if I had to describe what I want this work to be in like 4 words it would be “infrastructures for non-committal viewing.”

my dad called this work ‘exciting’ because it fits the ratio of my mums phone. He said it was like a nice gift for her, and was jealous I didn’t make one for him. kinda ironic bc its not a private work, but public (on the world wide web baby) but also it’s a relatively ubiquitous aspect ratio. idk. contradictions

Experiment 2 screenshots

3d model screenshots (used in this work)  (will be explained elsewhere)

Assessment 2 experiment 1

ASSESSMENT 1 FINAL POSTER DOCUMENTATION + STATEMENT

Words In Space is a poster addressing representations and manifestations of rebellion.

 At the work’s centre is an interrogation of the limits of creative rebellion, where signification of counter-cultural traits is only possible when acknowledging the systems the work tries to dismantle. On this, Frederic Jameson writes “countercultural forms of cultural resistance … are all somehow secretly disarmed and reabsorbed by a system of which they themselves might well be considered a part, since they can achieve no distance from it.” ‘Successful’ rebellious art doesn’t identify with frameworks it claims to undo, but in its absence from them, often via alternate modes of cultural distribution.

Accordingly some practitioners like Adam Harvey, Hito Steyerl or the cyber-activist project Queering The Map consider the rebellious implications of controlling ones visibility and identity outside of normative social systems.

I think that rebellion entails presenting, but not explicitly detailing and thus compromising, countercultural ideals and identities. Rebellion could point towards the potential existence of an alternate ideological utopia whilst being open-ended enough to avoid being subsumed into the systems being critiqued.

Hito Steyerl gives a maxim for this invisibility by proposing, “merging into a world of pictures.” This creative method forms the basis of Words In Space. The poster isn’t made up of a singular image but rather layers of printed drawings, collages, photographs and found images, stacked on top of each other in a light-box. Contesting images fight for visibility. Those closest to the top are seen most clearly yet are the least illuminated by the light-box. This creates a matrix of potential interpretations and obscurities of meaning that reveals, yet makes unintelligible my personal aesthetics and ideologies of ‘rebellion.’

Written in rhinestones across the surface of the poster is the slogan “words in space.” It speaks to a joint inundation and alienation of visual contexts, allowing the poster to obscure itself out of being understood by the social structures it responds to.