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.

Mid Point review

Research:
Mutation of forms in Myths. 
Comparing the mutational imagery in Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" to the  mutational imagery of a contemporary artist.



Someone could find a strong similarity between the mythologies and religions of human kind.This is a theme of transformation, considered to be a natural law which encompasses the whole universe. The essence of oneself and the essence of the whole universe is one, while bodies are transient :
"...Myth is but the penultimate; the ultimate is openess- that void or being, beyond the categories- into which the mind must plunge alone and be dissolved..."( Joseph Campbell, "The Hero with a thousand Faces", ch.The Cosmogenic Cycle, 1993)

In mythologies we encounter various images of gods who reperesent change and fluidity:

Wheel of fortune, from ms. of John Lydgate's Troy Book and Story of Thebes, England,c.1455-1462












In myths outer changes of shape reveal an inner, "hidden" character. Animals, vegetables, munerals, beasts, humans are transformed one in to the other. Myths teach a sense of "unity in multiplicity", a "truth" beyond names and forms.







Bosh's "Garden of Earthly Delights"

Bosh's painting involves a merging of forms, monsters associated with eggs and hatching. All these disturbing hybrid forms are thought to be related to an alchemical process while the whole triptych repeats the nature's circuit of birth, life , death and rebirth. Bosh's painting constitutes a microcosm, a garden which encloses a world. It is a uniting of different genres in the same place, a strangely fluid distant land.

My question would be: How could technology be used to create an imagery of the mutation of forms? And how could this reveal a secret , "personal" interpretation of the world?
To answer this, I will try to compare Bosh's Garden of Earthly Delights to an artwork of a contemporary artist.

The artist Barbara Rauch was a suggestion of my tutor Jonnathan Kearney.
In Rauch' s work we participate in a transformative act as human feelings appear to alter the form of the body.
Human passions and feelings take the form of animal characteristics ; an act which proves the close affinity existing among man and animals.

I encountered this image of Richard Stammer's untitled piece (1991) in a book named "Digital dialogues", which is a collection of articles focusing on the meaning of technology.
Richard Stammer "dismembers"a body and creates a figure resembling a mythical creature.
He achieves a new "synthesis" through the destruction of the old familiar form of the human body, as well as a new image of the world. Fiction seems to take over reality.





I would like to end with the following images from the book I am reading at the moment. It is called "Anamorphic Art"of Jurgis Baltusaitis and take us back to the 18th century:

Anamorphic art:"...A system with basis of mathematics and physics around which figurative forms and mental speculations are made and unmade.."
It seems to me that the distortion techniques of technology could be used easily to create a sense of a "false"reality, and yet a "universe" full of personal meanings.

group presentation01

The more I try to represent my ideas in a specific form , the more I realise that this is almost impossible as  they are  in constant transformation by the process of research . My intention may seem totally altered from the slightest shift in focus.

My initial interest lied in how the myths feed our personal fantasy and how this could serve as a starting point to personal transformation, and as a result ,to cultural evolution.

I believe that through the myths and fairytales found in our culture, we all encountered  the  storytelling of a hero or heroine who journeys  through fantastical adventures only to discover his or her inner self.

Apuleius ‘ the Metamorphoses of Lucius, or the Golden Ass ':

“ I wondered whether the stones I kicked against were really, perhaps petrified
men and whether the birds I heard singing were people in fathered disguises and I began to entertain doubts about the trees around the house, and even about the faucets through which the fountains played..”

There is something in the nature of fantasy that really intrigues me;there seems to be a flow of information between the internal and external worlds we inhabit.

We are at first inspired from mythology and folklores that surround us, and then transform them in a

personal setting. Even if our fantasies seem to be “borrowed” from our culture, they still have the power to reveal our inner selves.


The senses of the outer body are linked to 'souls ' inside the brain, which include ' the imaginative soul, or fantasy' according to the Neoplatonist scheme of Robert Fludd ( 'Vision of the Triple Soul in the Body' from Utriusque Cosmi, 1617)

















 At the heart of every fantasy, lies the desire for a personal evolution, as well as all the possible scenarios for our life to come. Fantasies provide substitute of what life lacks and give us strength to endure.

I am interested in people influenced by what they read, by the movies and other cultural materials they watch, people who live their most treasured stories.

I consider this to be a kind of achievement without which one’s life would be passionless, lacking hope and forward momentum.

I am also interested in the dark side of fantasising when people being trapped into the novels and movies they watch, consequently are so immersed into their own fantasised world ,that they miss out on real life or cannot communicate with others.

At this point, I’m thinking of videorecording conversations of people, revealing their private mythologies. I consider it being an imaginary journey between differing mental worlds, a labyrinth-like psychological structure.

Inside the conversation, two different belief systems are confronting each other. I believe that the reoccurring reversal of the two belief systems, will suddenly lead to a parallel synchronised way of thinking that is going to reveal  their similar identities.

I’m thinking of using the “space” of conversations as a tool for discovery, and a tool for poetic constructions. I consider them to be a structure , a three dimensional space whose inhabitants utilise and through which they reconstruct meaning.

In ancient years, medieval monastic practices, known as the art of memory,  used a text as a foundation for composition and invention. Such practices where based on a fully individual new composition  from one’s own reading of the biblical text. It was supposed to bring together in this new structure, distinct “places” , images,  texts or signs, as recalled from associational memory. Another important value in monastic life was to bring an individual's discoveries into the public domain,  while all this was understood to be acts of “invention”.

The words uttered inside a conversation and the meaning residing, can act for me as the foundation text used in these medieval monastic practices.

I imagine it as an experiment, which will hopefully lead to a   “ cross cultural space” and political influence of heterogeneous people’s histories and languages.

In all that I also see a performative quality, which really interests me, as it is like trying to create a plot-line from ordinary people and interact with them.

I hope that something like that might offer possibilities for thinking differently.

My aim would be to prove the degree of familiarity between  the inner worlds of people…Familiarity that exists between things perceived as dissimilar, sameness in otherness. Many fantasies are drawn from the fiction , art and myths surrounding our culture… what thought to be a unique fantasy is probably shared by others. In our everyday life we talk so little about our fantasies that it seems quite possible that we will never find out the commonalities. We can use that commonality to foster intimate ties between us. If we do so, it seems to me quite possible for us to live our utopian scenario in real life.

Another aim would also be to accept the differences in others. While enjoying excursions into the believe world of others; we expand the boundaries of our “known” world  for seeing immeasurable dimensions open around us…

If we do so, it seems to me quite possible not only to script our personal scenarios in our fantasies, but to live a collective utopian one, in real life.

The revellers in the Garden eat, carry, flourish, and play with all kinds of fruits: they also emerge from berries and gourds, and even appear to be turning and plums (detail, Bosch Garden of earthly Delights)