PDF of Reflection, Refraction, Projection

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©ELA BOYD TANGIBLE MEDIA THERE // NOT THERE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
UCSD VISUAL ART MFA PROGRAM THESIS COMMITTEE
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TEDDY CRUZ
CLINTON TOLLEY, PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT
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Reflection, Refraction, Projection
How can the phenomenal aspects of being–such as our sense of our body as it moves through space,
the intentionality of perception and the relationship between image and imagination–be presented in a
radically new way? Although much scientific and philosophical research has been produced on these
topics, how these paradigms are problematized within the field of media art and visual representation
remains a nascent endeavor. Artistic discourse and practice has been captivated by the Post-Modern
project of “reading” images, the mere highlighting of an image’s symbolic and representational
qualities. In his time, Marshall McLuhan lamented a lack of understanding of media, and its meaning
as powerful phenomena rather than fixating on specific content.
The electric light escapes attention as a communication medium just because it has no
“content.” And this makes it an invaluable instance of how people fail to study media at all. For
it is not till the electric light is used to spell out some brand name that it is noticed as a medium.
Then it is not the light but the “content” (or what is really another medium) that is noticed. The
message of the electric light is like the message of electric power in industry, totally radical,
pervasive, and decentralized. For electric light and power are separate from their uses, yet
they eliminate time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio, telegraph,
telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth.1
I contend that we are not fully cognizant of the phenomenological implications of the image, the
screen and the ontology of the object. The primacy of addressing our limited conception of the
philosophical implications of media is tantamount to understanding being. It is necessary to look
deeper into how forms are mediated through consciousness and media. What happens when
intangible forms/appearances are regarded as actual? How can we theorize and present the image
as an actual presence rather than symbolic/representative? In spatializing the image, the world
ultimately becomes a dynamic, faceted screen–an interface for perception. What is the role of visual
perception within this ontological subject/object paradigm?
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In my exhibition, Reflection, Refraction, Projection, I use the prismatic form as a lens. This lens
is a central device to explore visual perception and ontology. As the prism form transmutes through
three light installation works, three corresponding theses regarding possible ways of being are
presented. The first installation Refraction, an exploded prism-lens, is a materialization of the
decentralized character of the object–the expanded, fragmented and faceted object that transverses
through channels of media and consciousness. The second installation, Reflection, gives one the
sense of being inside the prism-lens. The installation relates the subject to spatiality. Adumbrations
of movements from multiple vantage points form a reflected environment of the self projecting
through physical space and consequently the self becoming the spatial environment. Reflection
and Refraction posit a model of Being-in-the-world as a constellation comprised of subject and
object nodes. In this matrix, both the subject and object project their image outward. Intersubjectivity
is visible in both the connecting vectors and the transparent superimposition of projected images.
The final installation, Projection is an experience of looking through the prism-lens. Presenting
the prism as an interlocutor to an imagined way of being–a literal window into an altered sense of
time and space. In the superimposition of the viewers’ shadow with the positive image of a natural
environment, Projection posits an inverted world beyond our natural spatial perception and ultimately
Being-in-the-world.
In James Turrell’s installation, Afrum, light on two-dimensional wall corners appears to be a threedimensional luminous cube shape floating in the center of the room. This work questions our cognitive
faculties’ ability to apprehend spatial forms accurately. Robert Irwin’s work suggests light can be
an actual art object. During their involvement in the Experiments in Art and Technology Program,
Irwin and Turrell built artistic practices challenging the limitations and conceptual implications of
visual perception. Their efforts provided a foundation for contemporary works that hypothesize, in
failing to consciously take in a complete spectrum of sensory information or by projecting additional
information, what we think we see may not actually be what we are seeing. Of course most artists
are presenting some form to be regarded in a different manner. Yet the Light and Space movement is
noteworthy for its rigorous investigation of perceptual phenomena and creating experiences (rather
than discrete objects) of seeing the self seeing.
Robert Irwin’s practice is heavily influenced by Phenomenology. Phenomenological texts are also an
influential theoretical component in my artistic practice. More specifically, these texts explore concepts
of not seeing or not having access to the “whole picture”. Is a determinate horizon available for us
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to see? How can we trust our cognitive faculties to perceive what is outside of the self accurately?
What is the role of one’s vantage point at each moment of seeing as it relates to the determinate
whole? I find Husserl’s concept of Protention and Retention compelling. Husserl’s account holds
that a lack of immediate visual content is filled in by images from memory and intention. What is
the role of the image and imagination in perceiving existence? How are appearances related to
actuality? How can we truly know the object, the self and the world? What methodologies are most
effective in our ontological investigations? I favor looking at these subjects through the lens of
phenomenological research based in space and time as it manifests within consciousness. It seems
relevant as our understanding and experience of spatiality and temporality are interdependent. In my
practice and research, I consider the object and being spatially in terms of the ambiguity or inversion
of dimensionality, positive/negative space and permeating space. Temporality manifests in terms
of potentiality and the trajectory from consciousness to form. As much of continental philosophy
suggests, despite empirical findings, definitive theories of the object are largely speculative. I have
entered into pondering the object and crafting an ontological theory, entitled Apparition Cognition.
I was fortunate to engage in some “field research” within Haim Steinbach’s seminar, The Object.
The format of the course involved bringing an object and discussing each other’s objects each
week. To provoke a conversation regarding appearances as actual, I brought a digital Smart Object
(a component of Adobe Photoshop). During the course, I deduced some common themes and
misconceptions within ontological analysis. My colleagues would attempt to know the object via the
following epistemological methodologies- how well it fits in hand, object as a tool, its name and how
it functions as a sign for a related concept or entity (semiotics), narrative (either personal or cultural),
causality/origin and finally rational data gleaned from the internet. It was puzzling to spend hours
using these systems to talk “around” the object, never entering into knowing the “objecthood” of the
object– its way of being. To interpret the object as having a relative functionality as a means to an end
determined by the subject–each object as a tool for our gain, is merely to enlist the objects as soldiers
for our small battles. The at-hand tool approach is clearly a faulty process of examination, because
we not only limit what we see in the object–its whatness, it’s way of being–but it is not the case for
all objects. Objects that exist in mind, intangible objects and objects that exist in the natural world far
from our reach, become excluded from our lexicon of beings. To look at objects in relation to how well
they fit in hand; their tactile qualities and employment as tools is a two-fold assumption–only objects
that are tactilely sensible and/or function as tools for us to use (for our own ends) are actual objects.
Another misguided subjectivist endeavor is to relate to the object as it’s embedded within one’s own
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personal narrative. Peter Schwenger observes, “Their long association with us seems to make them
[things] custodians of our memories; so that sometimes, as in Proust, things reveal us to ourselves
in profound and unexpected ways. Yet, all this does not mean that things reveal themselves, only
our investments in them.”2 These object related stories engage in a personal mythologizing of
the object, but tell me very little about the actual object itself. When the object becomes a literary
symbol, we lose its dimensional character and intrinsic essence. Narrative is of course constructed
by the fiber of semiotics. David Abram warns, “By linguistically defining the surrounding world as
a determinate set of objects, we cut our conscious, speaking selves off from the spontaneous life
of our sensing bodies.”3 The linguistic definition as in the name game we play with semiotics also
creates a mirroring effect, which points us to a tangential object meaning relation, but is not a key
to unlock the actual way of being of the object. The above methodologies are ways we attempt to
control the object, we deny its continual revealing of authentic objectness. In so doing, we diminish its
power. Heidegger advocates, “…the unveiling appropriation of the extant [object] in its being-such is
precisely not a subjectivizing but just the reverse, an appropriating of the uncovered determinations
to the extant entity as it is itself.”4 In each moment, the object is revealing itself to us. Although, in our
apprehension the object we can acknowledge that we constantly negotiate knowing from our relative
position and this should factor into the legitimacy of our findings.
When approaching each object in the context of the class, respondents always touched upon the
origin of the object. I noticed when the origin of the object was unknown, students would quickly look
up more information regarding the object via the Internet. The Internet becomes an epistemological
tool to look deeper into the ontology of the object. Yet, the Internet is largely a digital emanation of
our collective consciousness. The origin of the object as sourced via the Internet, becomes an object
that is born from our collective consciousness. The digital object informs the physical object. Look at
the paradigm of looking at a physical object and then referencing it online. It is the modern eidos, an
object that travels from ideal form to the physical world, to consciousness, into the digital world, back
through the individual consciousness and then back to the physical object. For example, consider
a table as a general object: You see a physical table, it passes through your consciousness, you
Google “table”, the digital table object appears–this is a digital aspect of a physical table somewhere
else that passed through the consciousness of someone else, was photographed and uploaded
online. Before the physical table was actualized it was a form in someone’s consciousness. If a
physical table was not present to spark the google inquiry, it would be passing through memory. In
this causality paradigm imagine parallel sequential adumbrations of object emanations spanning out
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like an accordion. The table object both travels from physical to intangible and is present in multiple
locations simultaneously. This paradigm of Google as intermediary is not evident in my exhibition, but
the process of moving from two-dimensional form through consciousness to three-dimensional form
back to a two-dimensional phase is explored and will be discussed later within the essay.
To say the object is an apparition is perhaps a bold statement, although it is referenced in Kant’s
concept of the Manifold of Appearances. Although he holds that something can be an empirical object
without being an immediate object of perception, according to Heiddeger, Kant positions the reality of
objects as relative to the perceptual comportment of the subject. Here perceivedness is equated with
being. If you can see something, for example a shadow of a man shaped by trees5, in that moment of
perceiving; the man is actual for you. Both Kant and Husserl touch upon seeing appearances, which
are different from the thing behind the appearance as in Kant’s Phenomena or Husserl’s writings
on perspective. To radically “see” the object in a new way is to consider it as part of the object body
whole. I posit the physical object as one appearance of a multi-modal object. The object is one entity
yet spread across multiple platforms of being–its’ facets include the object of consciousness, the
image object; the digital image, the physical image, the projected image, the image of consciousness,
the intended object of personal comportment, the intended object of each person’s unique assertion
of its cubist reflection projections, the eidos of the form before it was actualized, its previous states of
being held within itself, the materials that shaped its physical limb, the potential object, the physical
decay, all of its copies, the phonetic name sound and the memory of it (both personal and collective).
It’s as if these are all particles within an object beam of light. Ultimately, the object one observes
is a synthesis of presence and appearance. This is a pure unveiling of the object, by its many
simultaneous ways of existing wherein the object continually transcends location and physical self
with its intelligent capacity to fragment through our attention economy6. The object has the power to
transverse through our consciousness into mutable forms. Each time we see or recall an image of
the object, we are seeing just one apparition of an overall elemental force. Each object has the power
to act in the way water or oxygen performs in the natural world. When I breathe air, it travels through
me and remains part of the atmosphere. When I see water in a stream or in my sink, it is a small
apparition of the world’s entire ecology of water as natural resource.
Let’s look further into how this paradigm is possible through space and time. How can the object have
several spatial modalities simultaneously? The primacy of digital ontology is increasingly relevant to
the issue. The common assumption, seems to be digital media is merely a virtual, synthetic, fake;
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a copy, sign, symbol or simulacra of the “real world”. Additionally, because the digital object seems
to hover in a non-historical referential space, the origin/causality has to be a referent to some “real
world” physical object. For example, in the context of the course my colleagues regarded the digital
smart object image as virtual; a copy or symbol of a physical object, not an actual object in and of
itself. Perhaps it’s the flatness of the object’s dimensional character or its intangibility that blocks
one from seeing these digital objects as actual, but such an emphasis on tangibility becomes a form
of blindness. Despite our world being apprehended by a synthesis of spatial and pictorial visual
perception, we continue to delineate between spatial objects and pictures. Within art discourse it is
commonly held that pictures are visual metaphors to be “read” as referring to something real. Spatial
objects take shape, creating actual forms that can be representational but are always actual. Each
object is a multi-modal being of many emanations. This is hinted at in the pre-digital era text, Ways
of Seeing, as it discusses the image of a painting as captured by the camera and projected through
Television tubes to multiple homes:
[before the camera was invented] Sometimes the painting was transportable. But it could never
be seen in two places at the same time. When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys
the uniqueness of its image. As a result, its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning
multiplies and fragments into many meanings. This is vividly illustrated by what happens
when a painting is shown on a television screen. The painting enters each viewer’s house …
Because of the camera, the painting now travels to the spectator rather than the spectator to
the painting.7
Herein, Berger attempts to point out the way in which the object’s meaning changes and perhaps
could be regarded as less valuable, but he continues to speak of the painting, in terms of a single
object that travels and projects emanations of itself through the camera, the television, into a physical
environment and ultimately to the eye of the viewer. Regardless of the shift in meaning, the object
is described as one object that has a decentralized character and travels to reveal itself. Just as the
object travels through electrical cables, to emit from a TV or computer screen, the object also travels
through our consciousness from one person to another, until it garners more and more attention:
increasing its actuality by means of agreement.
The idea object has a spatial character, as it occupies space in mind. It is akin to the digital object in
its intangibility. It is both visible and invisible. It is visible in the mind’s eye of the thinker, yet hidden
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to others. You can pass the image to others via language, yet, it remains malleable and shifts form
based on interpretations and desires. This can be described temporally, in the way the object travels
via consciousness and tele-technology, from dream space to imagination, through language to form.
The object enacts a different temporal sequence in each scenario. On the phenomena of imagination,
However even when I imagine, the identity synthesis that is proper to all intentionality remains
in force. An imaginary object stays one and the same through many imaginings of it. There is
a manifold with an identity at its core even in imagination. We can take things we have hardly
perceived and enroll them into imaginary scenarios, and the things remain the same; or we
can fabricate purely imaginary things and put them into an imaginary routine and they remain
the same throughout. Obviously imaginary objects do not have the thick solidarity of perceived
objects, since we can fantasize them into all sorts of improbable situations…8
The object exists in multiple temporal schemes simultaneously–imagined time, potentiality, dream
time, memory, its previous states are all hovering around and held within the object. Sokolowski
elaborates further on potential, “The horizon of the potential and the absent surrounds the actual
presences of things. The thing can always be presented in more ways than we already know; the
thing will always hold more appearances in reserve.”9
Through my hypothesis of the object thus far, I have mapped a way in which the spatial and temporal
character of the object is perhaps more expansive than is commonly held. In this paradigm the object
does indeed transcend all of its heretofore appearances. If the object has the ability to transcend its
objectness, what does it become? Could it be regarded as a subject? Perhaps the object is part of
an intersubjective exchange? To be a subject that responds to other subjects, the object would have
to contain some form of consciousness or intelligence. By immediately making the assumption all
objects are inanimate unthinking objects, we miss the opportunity to not only truly see the object, but
to work with the object. Smart objects (smart phones, autofill, websites that learn your preferences,
webcams and spaces controlled by sensors) embody this model of co-creation. They have an acute
awareness or intelligence of our behaviors and desires. They enact the subjects’ desires by changing
surfaces, remembering changes and persevering the eidos of the form. In this instance, the subjects’
desires become the content of the object, and the subject is at once both objectified and the source
of causality for the object’s appearance. With this role reversal the object becomes the subject.
It’s easy to see objects comprised of interactive media as “smart”, intelligent or even conscious.
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Some of my previous work uses interactive media to evoke this Conscious Object theory. Yet, I
would argue that all analog objects have the same capacity. For this reason, the exhibition has light
objects and materials that reflect the viewer or encourage the viewer to move in different directions
creating an interactive exchange via analog means. In addition to the aforementioned ability to travel
through consciousness garnering attention, every object we come into contact with whether physical
or intangible, is an interface into an intersubjective conversation. Is it possible the subject has a
decentralized character as well–appearing as simultaneous apparitions?
My strategy with the installation, Refraction, is to create a visualization of the theories I’ve outlined
thus far. Refraction is an exploded or expanded object made of projections from multiple directions
passing through suspended mylar facets and string. Images and light refract around the room. The
physical materials and implied forms synthesize presences and appearances. The layered light
refractions on the walls give one a sense of dimensionality that oscillates between expanding and
collapsing the overall space (seeing more or less of the pictorial horizon). Each individual mylar facet
and suspended string also expands and collapses its dimensionality, dependent on the viewer’s
vantage point. The mylar panels infer a framework of a prism but the absent sides are interactively
intended by the viewer. The literal fragmentation of panels hanging in different areas of the room
illustrate the expanded object matrix.
I am inspired by the Bauhaus artist Lazlo Maholy-Nagy. He went to great lengths to make mechanical
apparatuses that would cast light abstractions, which he would then photograph. Within his practice,
the physical object is merely a means for the actual art object, the light refraction. The light then
becomes an image object (his photograph) that travels to viewers. Similarly in Refraction, the
physical object is transparent and becomes an intermediary catalyst for the light object. In projecting
images of light through the mylar, the photographic image of light becomes an actual light object
again. The appearance becomes actual as in the aforementioned thesis of perceivedness equating
existence. Additionally, the content of what I’m projecting is photographs of light on the mylar, which
is projected back onto itself. This transmutes the dimensional form into an image, back onto the
dimensional form, then into an appearance of a light image object that is both flat (on the wall) and
dimensional (layers of light giving the appearance of depth). Moving from a three-dimensional form
into two-dimensional and back to three-dimensional, then finally to a mixed dimensional appearance.
I continue to explore this strategy within my practice.
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In the installation, lines of string connecting the mylar panels become vectors connecting the object
nodes–which typically would be the invisible channels of internet cable, television and consciousness.
With advances in ubiquitous computing, the world is a screen-less computer, comprised of smart
objects. From a theoretical perspective, I postulate the world as already being a faceted screen.
What we take in are projections of images of things. My personal experience of perception is in the
form of images. I have a photographic memory–recalling moments as pictorial scenes. My mind
stores pre-recorded perceptions into photos and movies. Herein the mind is an imaging faculty
projecting a catalog of images onto the physical world–a superimposition of past projections and
imagination onto physical reality in the present moment–shaping the determinate horizon of the
world. In this way it seems we both take in and project out imagery. As an artist, I’m fascinated by
glass doors and windows that reflect light phenomena of their surrounding spaces. It’s as if these
spaces are projecting outward from multiple directions simultaneously and this is only captured via
the glass, the screen, the metallic surface or the reflection. If all things are just light waves of object
images projecting, traveling about–is the object simultaneous there and not there? Are we seeing
actual beings or light waves projecting into our vision system? Something I would like to investigate
further during my graduate study is apprehending the image of the world within visual perception
from a cognitive science perspective. For instance learning about mirror neurons, that spark when
you see another being engaging in a specific behavior, leads me to think that the self comports or
transports to others in seeing their image (in the physical world or in a photographic image). If we
are able to see an image of someone and react as if they are satellite component of our own body,
is the self a decentralized, multi-nodal apparition as well? A way of both being there and not there
simultaneously?
In Reflection, everything that has been asserted about the object vis-à-vis Apparition Cognition
applies to the subject. Reflection is an installation using three suspended holographic mylar panels
that capture reflections of a figure dancing and walking in space. The holographic projections of the
dancer subject, may seem to be an appearance, but are of course perceptible as an actual figure
present in the moment of apprehension. The subject (in general) has a decentralized character that
proliferates through media and consciousness, continually unveiling itself and projecting its image
outward. For example, I was on a flight recently and saw a movie with Uma Thurman. I thought to
myself, “She seems like a nice person.” Then I realized, “how can I be sure she exists”? I have only
seen her image projected and proliferated through media and never seen her physical form in person.
Yet, it is commonly assumed Uma Thurman is actual. In her image traveling to the public, she herself
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and her actuality travels with it. Another example, during a discussion recently, students expressed
fear and concern about Facebook tagging their images (without human intervention) and further
disseminating their images online. They concluded the source of their concern is in their belief, the
image of the self is the self. The issue of embodiment is evocative within telepresence. With Skype,
people are in awe–”it’s as if they’re actually there with me”. If a presence is perceptibly visible, it is
there with you in some form. The image form of the subject is mediated through cameras, internet
and consciousness. Just as the internet enacted the Global Village10, media will continue to advance
and the question of embodiment will become less relevant–the divide between image and physically
present will become less discernible.
Camera view relates back to the idea of singular vantage point. Regarding photographic seeing, Lazlo
Maholy Nagy writes of “simultaneous seeing by means of superimposition.”11 Naturally, we never see
in some of the ways that media presents (superimposition, macro zoom, black and white, etc.) In
many ways, each environment is only for the self, in the self and of the self–in that it is comprised of
your vantage point at that moment and can’t be available to anyone else. Again, with media the same
environmental image can be projected for multiple viewers simultaneously, yet it is still in context
of their viewing space. Even in a movie theater, each person is displaced slightly in relation to the
screen. In Ways of Seeing, John Berger writes of perspective and appearances,
The convention of perspective, which is unique to European art and which was first established
in the early Renaissance, centers everything on the eye of the beholder. It is like a beam from
a lighthouse–only instead of light traveling outwards, appearances travel in. The conventions
called those appearances reality. Perspective makes the single eye the centre of the visible
world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity. The visible world
is arranged for the spectator as the Universe was once thought to be arranged for God12
Perspective/vantage point is evident in the faceted geometric planes of my work and its reference
to cubism. Media theorist, Anne Friedberg, compares vision strategies, “Although the algorithmic
constructions found in video games, in quicktime panoramas, in virtual reality systems continue
to rely on digital simulacra of perspectival space, not all digital space is designed to suggest three
dimensions. Instead, the vernacular “space” of the computer screen has more in common with
surfaces of cubism–frontality, suppression of depth, overlapping layers–than with the extended
depth of Renaissance perspective.”13 The singular vantage point is already blended with memory
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fragments of previous perspectives (protention
and retention14). If multiple perspectives are
visible within one view-point, the object becomes
less of determinate whole and enters further
into abstraction. The same can be said for the
personal position combined with other subjective
views–the image (or concept) becomes more
kaleidoscopic than robust. Is a determinate whole
“picture” possible or is it continually unfolding
for each viewer in each moment? I mapped my
overall exhibition to point to this quandary. In that
each vantage point of each object and the overall
scene differs quite a bit from the next, collapsing
and expanding in multiple ways. Hypothetically,
if seeing all vantage points simultaneously was
possible, what would it look like?
This is discussed in Merleau Ponty’s “la pensée de
survol”,
The tree that manifests itself phenomenally
does not manifest itself from all sides
and all times at once; it adumbrates itself
through time and space. For objective
thought, which is characterized by MerleauPonty as “la pensée de survol” or thought
that ranges over all space and time, this
spatio-temporal unfolding is collapsed, and
the real tree is conceived as encompassing
the entire series of adumbrations. Where
are we to conceive the real; in the partial
adumbration or in the completed series?
…phenomenal time is transcendent and
irreducible to the processes of immanent
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constitution, it is evident that the objective
thought of the total series of adumbrations
is ideal rather than real, a presumptive
synthesis, since it includes moments that
are no longer and moments that have yet
to be. However, if we atomize time and
segment space, we are left with a view
of the tree from position P1 at time T1, a
literally one-sided and instantaneous view
that is clearly inadequate to the real tree.
Neither alternative, neither the totality nor
the isolated adumbration can be taken as
disclosing the real.15
To work with this way of seeing in Reflection, I
shot video of a dancer subject from three vantage
points. The video is projected onto three panels
of holographic film. The projection keystones to
give the appearance of depth on a flat panel. Of
course it would be impossible to have cameras
for each minute vantage point and to document
her entire lifespan including when she was just
a thought in her mother’s mind. Instead my
aim was to capture a series a movements from
multiple angles and see them reflected upon one
another. “By considering the body in movement,
we can see better how it inhabits space (and
moreover, time) because movement is not limited
to submitting passively to space and time, it
actively assumes them,”16 With each active
movement all the potential movements hover
around her. The speed of her movements goes
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beyond natural temporality. In utilizing media, she is sped up four hundred times her natural speed
and slowed down at points to fifty percent. If we can experience time and space in an “unnatural” way,
does that mean spatio-temporality is interior or exterior to being? Her angular directional movements
are choreographed to enact being inside the prism. She also mimics the pin-wheel background
image. A centrifugal superimposition of figure and ground. The holographic image of the dancer
relates to consciousness and perception of space. On Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of imagination,
“[Merleau-Ponty] admits, with Jean Paul Sartre and others, that the image is not a mental content or
a copy of perceptions. The mental image is a particular mode of consciousness. But he also argues
that the image involves a spatiality that is continuous with the space of perception. According to
Merleau-Ponty, fanciful thinking and perception occur within a continuous spectrum that is mediated
and determined by the imagining body.”17 The adumbrations are collapsed in the video image, but
expanded within the spatial structure of the installation. The dancer is both reflected within each
video and the panels reflect each other. Subsequently, her image reflects around the room. The three
panels create a space made of the dancer and the entire room becomes an environment comprised
of the dancer. Not only does she inhabit space, project her image through space, she is the space.
She is in multiple spaces simultaneously–there yet not there.
Another inspiration in my work is Maya Deren’s film, Meshes of the Afternoon. The entire film has
a dream-like quality. It’s ambiguous as to whether the film captures a dream, an imagined montage,
a memory or potential scenarios overlapped. The most resonant scene involves multiple versions of
the same female protagonist in the frame. Again, one is left wondering if they are different aspects
of her personality, remembered selves, potential selves or multiple moments collapsing via the
artifice of film. In the same way, the multiple selves in Reflection, are meant to conceptually expand
temporally while literally collapsing spatially the aspects of self. Not only is the self multiplied in the
dancer video, but it is reflected once again with the image of the viewer moving through the space.
In many ways, the dancer is an emanation of Being-in-the-world. The background within the video
is shaped by refracted light. As in the physical world, we literally need light to see our environment.
With the holographic film, she is superimposed on the background of the actual room which is
shaped by all of the surrounding luminous projections (from Refraction and Projection). Reflection
presents the subject as literal projected image. If others only see our image made of light projected
outwards, than we are essentially a beam of light, just like a star beams its image to us. This is part
of the strategy with the second moving-through-space video showing a figure literally made of light
traveling through space. After seeing the dancer moving within a luminous space, we see a figure
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made of light in “void” space. Being is continually moving through space and time and in a state of
becoming. Each movement manifests out of series of potential manifestations. We are instinctually
aware that the body moving through space is a powerful phenomenal moment–in that each dynamic
movement is ephemeral. “The members of the audience understand the dance on the basis of their
own bodily experiences, which means that they must be aware of both the forces on the dancer’s
body and the image that is created by means of it. There is no shifting back and forth from perception
to imagination; the audience imagines by means of shared kinesthetic and bodily experiences.”18
In the exhibition, the physical objects are mere mechanisms to reveal energetic, yet intangible light
phenomena, which I have asserted as a viable object in itself. Perhaps what we perceive as beingreal is the superimposition of the subject’s image projecting outward to meet the object’s image in
space. Each are a force19 of energy within one field of reality20. Their (literal and figurative) brightness
is relative to their positionality. Intersubjectivity and intentional relationships between subjects and
objects happens in the in-between spaces, captured on the transparent screen or window. “…
truth as unveiling is in the Dasein as a determination of its intentional comportment, and it is also
a determinateness of some being, something extant, with regard to its being an unveiled entity. It
follows from this that being true is something that “lies between” the subject and the object, if these
two terms are taken in their ordinary external signification. The phenomenon of truth is interconnected
with the basic structure of the Dasein, its transcendence.”21
In the exhibition, the projections from the “object” (Refraction) spilling onto the “subject” (Reflection)
(and vice versa) make this thesis literally visible. In this thesis, the tangible, physical is just an
appearance of being-real and the light phenomena appearances are presented as being-actual.
Using this logic, the shadows of the cave would be the actual, the Noumena would be in the
Phenomena. The physical is just an engine for the traveling light image, merely an armature. Although
both the appearance and physical presence make up the total object (or subject), the traveling light
image is intrinsically more dynamic spatially and temporally than a fixed static physical armature.
This is intended to be a radicalization of the image, seeing and being. As being-real is problematic,
I’m compelled to ponder what a world outside of what we naturally experience would look like? If I
look through the prism-lens, what would I see? How can space and time be abstracted? Is a space
beyond space possible? Or a time outside of time? Although, objects operating outside of space-time
seems unimaginable, the final installation takes initial steps toward it by trying to envisage a new
space beyond or within ordinary space.
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The final installation, Projection, envisions
the object as an interlocutor–a window into a
world where the literal horizon of the ocean is
indeterminate–as it is vertical instead of horizontal.
It begins to look more like a waterfall or abstract
sparkles of light rather than ocean waves. Water
flows upside down and backwards. (Both videos
of light on water in Reflection and Projection
offer the physical water as a transparent catalyst
for the surface appearance of light phenomena)
In Projection, transparent layers of clouds jitter,
oscillate and envelope each other. Projection is
a video projection of a triangle in the corner of the
room. Due to a parallax effect from the lens to the
wall, the triangle becomes a distorted polygon. As
the viewer moves around the shape, the parallax
is between the eye of the viewer and the shape.
The form shifts and distorts. In Projection, positive
space and negative space are inverted. The
positive, tangible space of the surrounding wall is
a black void appearing as negative space. “The
window reduces the outside to a two-dimensional
surface; the window becomes a screen.”22 The
negative space of atmosphere appears positive
as it’s flattened in the whiteness of the image. In
spending time with the projection, it appears less
like a flat image and more like a window, a hole
in space–the positive, physical wall becomes
negative space at that same time that it is positive
as an image. Maybe a space beyond space is
an artifice of multiple dimensions of spatiality
occurring simultaneously. Anne Friedberg writes
on perspective within screens and windows: “The
screens of cinema, television, and computers
open “virtual windows” that ventilate the static
materialities and temporalities of their viewers. A
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“windowed” multiplicity of perspectives implies new laws of “presence”–not only here and there, but
also then and now–a multiple view–sometimes enhanced, sometimes diminished–out the window.”23
To add another layer of inversion, the projector in Projection is placed on the floor. As the viewer
walks in front of it, their larger than life black silhouette is cast onto the window image. The self that
naturally embodies positive space, becomes negative space. Not only is the subject superimposed
onto the image of the object, as with Reflection and Refraction, they both are projected onto the
world and yet removed from the world. A black void fills their place. They are there, but not there.
The image of the subject becomes part of the causality for the object/subject superimposition.
Without the physically present subject in the room, the shadow/ void figure would not be possible.
Without the projected object, there would be nothing to case a shadow of the subject. Would I be
able to experience a world comprised of a spatio-temporality that radically differs from what my body
naturally experiences? In the installation the moment loops in a vibrating jitter, an everlasting now…
The actual horizon of the earth is orthogonal to the world seen through the prism. If such a world
existed, I could not viably be there physically, yet I could be there in imagination. I could be both there
and not there.
All three works are successful in presenting the image in a new way. In spatializing the image, it
becomes the world and the world is the self. If the self can be traveling through and existing in
multiple places simultaneously–the physical space of the exterior world is spatially and temporally
intrinsic/interdependent with the self. One of my colleagues recently inquired regarding a presentation
of my work, “you keep talking about the subject and object, but where are you in the work?” To her,
it appears I’m nowhere (in the work). At first glance, maybe I’m the dancer–on the surface she is a
young female figure, like myself. Although, with deeper consideration, I’m more like the transparent
mylar, the google image search of the table or the prism-lens. At some point all the imagery either
originated, passed through or was superimposed within my consciousness. The images projected
towards me and from me. In all the facets, planes and screens you see emanations of my personal
visual perception; and objects of memory, dream and imagination.
Endnotes
1. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media (Berkeley, California: Gingko Press, 1964, 2003), 8.
2. Peter Schwenger, The Tears of Things (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 3.
3. David Abram, The Spell of Sensuous (New York, New York: Vintage Books Random House, 1997), 56.
4. Martin Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982), 219.
5. Ibid. 63.
6. Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net (First Monday, Volume 2, Number 4 – 7 April 1997)
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/519/440
7. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 19-20.
8. Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 72.
9. Ibid. 23.
10. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media (Berkeley, California: Gingko Press, 1964, 2003), 6.
11. Moholy-Nagy, Lázló. Painting , Photography , Film trans. Janet Seligman (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1973)
12. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 19-20.
13. Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006), 2-3.
14. (On Genuine and Non-genuine appearances) Don Welton, The New Husserl: A Critical Reader (Bloomington , Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 2003), 77.
15. MC Dillon, Merleau-Ponty‘s Ontology (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 90-91.
16. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, (New York, New York: Routledge Classics, 2002), 117.
17. James B. Steeves, Imagining Bodies Merleau-Ponty‘s Philosophy of Imagination (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University
Press, 2004), 68.
18. Ibid. 61.
19. “This notion of a force allows us to reconcile the thinghood and the properties”
John Russon, Reading Hegel‘s Phenomenology (Bloomington Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004), 30.
20.“…and Spinoza’s insight is to see that these Aristotelian “substances” really are properties of one single substance of reality.” Ibid.
21. Martin Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982), 218.
22. Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006), 1.
23. Ibid. 4-5.
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Image credits:
All art work and photo documentation ©Ela Boyd 2011
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Untitled Prism Series
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Reflection, Refraction, Projection Installation View
UCSD Visual MFA Program Art Gallery
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Reflection Detail
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Refraction
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Refraction Detail
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Refraction
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Reflection
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Reflection, Refraction, Projection Installation Detail