history: the new geography

In an article I wrote for food chain, I made an assertion about time that I would like to expand upon here. The assertion was that, with the globe all but explored and linked in communications networks, allowing anyone to effectively 'be' anywhere, the past is the only unexplored continent.

Time before, say, the twentieth Century, though accessible is far more remote that time after it. The information is not necessarily the click of a mouse away. A plan of research is often required to find specific data. The preparations made to retrieve a piece of information start to look a lot like those made by arctic explorers.

Time is an intellectual construct and researchers are the new, intellectual explorers, trawling through archives and museums and censuses. The information is generally housed in single locations that, though physical, are designed and archived in much the same way as a digital network but sometimes this exploration even bleeds into the physical with the excavation of archaeological sites.

I argue that, to an ever-increasing degree, objects and customs we are presented with from distant historical locations appear far more alien to us than any of those presented to us from distant geographical locations.

the human printer: Louise Naunton Morgan

from louisenauntonmorgan.com

Louise Naunton Morgan has some great work. My favourite piece is The Human Printer. Hand rendered images, made under the same constraints of a digital printer.

a

Is it looking ok yet? man, I don't know...

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a kind of mock up of how the posters will look

felix frith

Events such as dealing with the comparison of values in conversation can be subtle and crude where statements are mistaken and emotions or general states of comfort are the leaders of content, rather than any kind of intrinsic opinion. Stability or changeability of truth is therefore another issue I am concerned with. The many disparate and often heavy, sometimes trivial, assumptions that people make on a day-to-day basis seem highly unreliable and are not pursuits of truth at all. They appear to be pursuits of security or functionality; a way to satisfy the fear of the unknown and the instability the unknown brings. Being able to accept the fact that day-to-day assumptions can be wrong would promote the ability to live with the knowledge of the unknown.

By exposing various geometries of a subjective landscape/space, which tries to evoke and relate a wide variety of events and experiences, I hope to describe the relation between the self, the personal mind, and the idea of the other, the exterior person’s mind.

felix frith artist statement