Captatio oculi

Of interface because it is at this contact point between the real and the data recording machine, and then between it and the human being that the experience of the real is summed up. It is on these interconnected surfaces that what is to become the artwork is founded. Of capture, because it is all about capturing and of seizing the world. Of course segments of both the auditory and visual world must first be, in a way, be “entered” into the crucible of the computer’s virtual transformations. A computer that is in fact an organizer of information arranged according to the formatting and functions dictated by software.

In a previous text, I already claimed that the revolution ushered in by digital photography was not as important as previously presumed(1). Though it may be true that all reflection based on a logic of the index, capture and reproduction of what was once there, no longer corresponds to what the digital does, it nevertheless remains that a capture continues to be the basis of most of contemporary photographic works, almost all of which, more or less, make use of the digital.

It is consequently not hard to understand why Alexandre Castonguay’s Éléments appealed to me. This work presents a theatralization of machines which evoke photography and its original model: projection via camera obscura. But this is combined with transformation modes which are for their part specifically digital. Here luminous emanations filtered through a lens appear alongside liquid crystal films functioning like a slide projection. It is also important to highlight the reference to video inherent in the image capture of viewers and their real time reproduction.

Jean-Pierre Aubé’s Titan et au-delà de l’infini is spectacular. But the images that he shows are not reproductions of anything real. They result from a 2 minute long radio message sent by a drone from Titan, a moon orbiting Saturn. This sound file contains telemetric data which the artist organized in graphic form through a software, and then compiled thanks to an algorithm. The kinetic image born of this process is here constituted of data, of codified information. If the capture remains the fundamental operation on which everything depends, its content is of little importance since it is entirely different from what it was initially intended for.

Such a transformed capture effect is also present in both Sofian Audry’s and Martin Boisseau’s works. With the former it is in reference to an image of the viewer, who holds a card, which is taken in real time and reproduced via a projection. But, the word on the viewer’s card is not the same as the one she or he sees in the image, since another one, suggested by the first, has been substituted for it. This is a capture distorted by digital information modeled to disturb the truthfulness of the real time projection. The system is subject to semantic shifts, extensions and approximate metonymies. With Martin Boisseau, the capture is (almost) strictly respected. A mechanism, which he used in a prior work, is reapplied to create a rotating projection. The projected image is that of the very same gallery where it is presented. A redundancy effect, perhaps involving some minor modifications. Moreover, one can hear a voice which describes the shown site, in addition to making some remarks and reflecting on the meaning of this representation, on this substitution of art over the real.

In all these works, the end result reveals nothing of the inner workings, of the fundamental relations governing the show before us. Photography, video, digital data, transcoding and alteration of the original information consists of a spectacular display, a pleasure for the eye, yet the depths of these performances are not so much effective presences as they are digital captures…

1. Sylvain Campeau, « Captation », L’imprimé numérique en art contemporain, Trois-Rivières, Éditions d’art Le Sabord, Collection Essai, 2007, p. 29-34.