Power / Point
In this short video essay exploring the sculptural potential of digital space, the physical body and the computer cursor collide in a struggle to manipulate each other. Incorporating actions within Microsoft PowerPoint, there is a sense of frustration at the relentless banality of such digital software. Human actions start to echo pre-determined digital procedures.
Airing daily Feb 1 – Mar 31, as part of Direct Object/Direct Action Shorts 1
Screensaver
Screensaver explores a bodily relationship to digital imagery in our internet age. Drawing on notions of instructionals, live streaming, pop-ups and infomercials, in this video piece the sheen of the internet screen tumbles in on itself. The work circles around the concept that one can order online a .jpg printed on to a towel. What happens when a digital image is physicalized in this way and rubbed in the body? Will the body become a pixelated .jpg? And what if we try to feed such objects back in to the digital world?
Exploring these questions, the video takes you through floating landscape of digital debris. Sliding across the screen are verbatim recitals of chat room conversations about towel printing, discussions of .jpgs and duvets, videos painted on to nails via iCloud nail polish, spinning 3D CAD scans of towels and YouTube tutorials on how to make CGI towels.
All of these scenes are framed by the karaoke version of the song ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ whilst a hand cursor ‘flies’ towards an iCloud symbol across the empty void of the screen. Images of hands run throughout. In a world populated with touchscreen phones, we want to stroke and feel images, but when can we fly up to the iCloud?