Mnemonic Notations

Machine Ecstasy 100 EVA SUTI’ON Digital Photograph_y ‘991 By appropriating imagery from photographs (primarily old prints found in junk shops, flea markets, and garbage bins) and recomb% them by computer, I create a kmd of digital photomontage. Because of the nearly seamless image overlays that the computer makes possible, and because of the hstorical verisdtude that photographs possess, the works exist as falsely constructed historical relics. The purpose of such a relic is to invite the viewer to trust the image with feehgs of familiarity and nostalgia, while simultaneously subverting those feelings by presenting elements in juxtapositions that may be perceived as uncomfortable or ambiguous. Upon inspection, the gentle, aged appearance of the imagereveals fragile, natural, or specifically human elements (face, hands, feet) contained, controlled, or usurped by mechanical or technological components that often either appear to be menacing or present environments of destruction or decay. The nostalgic “old photo” style of the image sets up certain expectations in the viewer regarding content and subsequent response. For example, looking at a photo album of old pictures one expects to see family portraits, prosaic landscapes, or quaint old settings that generate nostalga for family and past. If instead of the expected scenario one dscovers hostile or contradctory elements, one is robbed of the comfort and pleasure generated by nostalga, thereby undergoing a sense of dsplacement. The fact that the image components are derived from a multitude of sources (mechanical objects, old tools, machme parts, gears, dustrations from children’s books, and old photos) defines my art-making process as a kind of gathering of cultural fragments -fragments that are recontextuahzed to create the resulting composite. With this collection of image fragments, I attempt to evoke multiple metaphorical associations that hopefully result in a complex ambiguity. The work confronts the viewer with elements that exist as equivalent, independent entities, yet remain visually interlocked in an unresolved tension. The viewer is then forced to imagine an emotional, irrational narrative in an attempt to explain the relationships that the image implies. Mnemonic Notations began as a series of images developed from one computer file that had been continuously modified in an intuitive manner. We have since developed this series into an interactive work incorporating over 360 indwidual animations (landscapes and soundscapes). The ongoing process of this work emerges from a reflection on the correspondences between mind, memory, our experience of the land, and the social constructions of religion and philosophy that have had a major impact on humanity’s perception of the world and, consequently, on the way it is remembered. The original Mnemonic Notations fde was constructed out of several photographs taken by Phillip George, the starting point being a shot of a person’s back. Subsequently, George incorporated hundreds of drawings and other photos into the digital file, which was output as a large-format transparency and a painted canvas at various stages in the process. The digtal file has been continuously edited for six years now. In 1992, Ralph Wayment took the finished images (which then numbered ZJ) Mnemonic Notations RALPH WAYMENT & PHILLIP GEORGE Interactive CD-ROM 7996 and began to work on a single interactive structure that would unify them, extending the piece to explore processes of memory and enable people from any culture to appreciate and, eventually, add to the work. Wayment’s interactive structure is based on the Buddhlst doctrine of creation by causes, which describes the universe as endless cycles of birth, growth, death, decay, regeneration, and rebirth. Participants’ routes through Mnemonic Notations are now defined by the choices they make in navigating their way through the 360 animations, so arranged as to gve participants over 68 billion alternative routes through the cycle that they form. Since each animation is further structured like a maze, with many paths and exits, Mnemonic Notations is never seen the same way twice. The spiraling interactions between human and machine memory result in changes to both. 408 Digital Salon, Artists’ Statements ...