Work in progress

The research i have been involved in, was about the mutations of forms in myths and about possible ways the former could be visualized through modern technology's interface. Mutations, as represented in myths, reveal a delight in the potency of change, a built in dynamic in all living beings and a magic aspect of reality.
After the submission of my research paper, i started reading the book ' Phantasmagoria' of Marina Warner were i came across the term 'haunted media' in order to express how modern technologies and first illusionist optical devices communicate imagination's desires and terrors and as a result open up unimagined universes.

Robertson's Phantasmagoria
Image from:http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/PHANTASMAGORIE.html

For Warner the projections are always supernatural creatures, while some of the words she uses to describe optical technologies are: eidolon, spectre, phantom

Images from : http://wernernekes.de/00_cms/cms/front_content.phd?idart-794



My initial idea, was to document the conversation between my mother and a friend. These two people have different religious belief systems.The theme of the conversation would be about some of religion's mythic stories and miracles. I intended to use the orginal footage as a basis on which i would project my own fantasies. The people invoved though, did not happen to interact as i expected; i am not satisfied with the recorded material which probably i am not going to use.

Simultaneously, i had started reading the book: 'Devices of Wonder' of Barbara Maria Stafford and Frances Terpak and got really interested in vanished mechanisms of the past: prisms, mirrors, microscopes, telescopes, magic lanterns, camera obscuras...

All these mechanisms involved some kind of interaction, as well as a distortion of appearances, a kind of mutation of forms.The observer had to shift his position and another 'reality' was being revealed to him.

At the moment what i have in mind is a dark space where figures float free. A close example is the work '7 lights'(2005-2008) of the artist Paul Chan. This artwork seems to be a play of shadows and light, a sort of a window into another realm while it is strongly associated with biblical accounts of creation and destruction.

                                              Image from: http://www.museomagazine.com/#993419/PAUL-CHAN




I came across the painting of Goya ' They rise up joyfully' and what i have in mind is to create something based on this painting, adding things as well as movement.

Iam also examining how changing images were produced by mechanisms of the past and what kind of visual vocabulary they used.

                                                             Mercury and Venus
                                         image from book 'devices of wonder' of Barbara Stafford and Frances Terpak


In this painting the physical relationship of the god and goddess changes when the metal dial affixed to the center of the object is rotated, dividing and redividing their bodies.

                                      Images from: http://wernernekes.de/00_cms/cms/front_content.php?idart=794
                                                     and: http://pillanatgepek.c3.hu/en/kiallitas/werner-nekes-gyujtemeny/

In these images pictures or sections of pictures are placed in relationship to one another in order to give the pictures a new meaning. Through the combination of pictures it is possible to assemble different versions.