Whitespace-Bluespace - Televisual Memory and the Implied Catastrophe
Exhibition Proposal
Title: Whitespace-Bluespace - Televisual Memory and the Implied Catastrophe (2016)
Overview:
Whitespace-Bluespace – Televisual Memory and the Implied Catastrophe is a multimedia installation that combines works on paper, video, and View-Master toys to address the unreliability of memory and perception. By investigating the wonderful, terrible sublime of “before” and “after,” Adams’ television-infused spaces offer a delicate dance of relativity.
Using cell phone photography in a real-time system of manipulation, Adams spent 8 months capturing digital “monotypes” from the TV screen, generating an archive of nearly 24,000 experimental images. Mined from Miami Vice, which she originally watched during a time of personal loss, Adams used an obsessive system of viewing and extracting. Her glitches suggest the imperfection of memory and our incomplete understanding of sequence and situation. The resulting environments are soft, fluid and abstract, inhabited by a cast of “heroes” who are undermined, human, uncertain and temporary.
In fact, characters in Whitespace-Bluespace… are composed of fragments, like memory itself. Adams’ work suggests that our memories, like episodic TV viewing, are an abstract palette. We construct a mosaic of understanding by assembling clues extracted from media—from our life experiences—allowing us to “know” people, places, and events by collating data, much of it reframed (often misunderstood). Her work uses passive and active media to investigate the tension between specificity and obscurity, emphasizing the distance between what is known and unknown.
Media:
Real-time cell phone image-manipulation "monotypes" (featuring both manual and digital glitch), output as different media forms (passive, active, intimate). This body of work is a mutative archive that can be adapted to suit the space where it is installed.
Installation:
1. Still images on paper
2. View-Masters - yep! Those rad, stereoscopic toys. Each reel is a separate piece.
3. 23,000+ image archive, printed on small pieces of paper - public, collaborative install. One section of the exhibition will house the entire archive as an interactive, viewer-installed collaborative piece. Attendees will be able to position their chosen image-moments as they see fit, further reshuffling and reframing each media memory, while still suggesting the "before" and "after" of a series of events. Allows for a dynamic, where viewers select and place image cells from the archive wherever they wish on the arvhice wall--random, yet extracted from a finite system of ...this will allow...
4. Videos - Silent, looping video art pieces designed to be shown on a television set, or projected (they are adaptable).
Overview:
Whitespace-Bluespace – Televisual Memory and the Implied Catastrophe is a multimedia installation that combines works on paper, video, and View-Master toys to address the unreliability of memory and perception. By investigating the wonderful, terrible sublime of “before” and “after,” Adams’ television-infused spaces offer a delicate dance of relativity.
Using cell phone photography in a real-time system of manipulation, Adams spent 8 months capturing digital “monotypes” from the TV screen, generating an archive of nearly 24,000 experimental images. Mined from Miami Vice, which she originally watched during a time of personal loss, Adams used an obsessive system of viewing and extracting. Her glitches suggest the imperfection of memory and our incomplete understanding of sequence and situation. The resulting environments are soft, fluid and abstract, inhabited by a cast of “heroes” who are undermined, human, uncertain and temporary.
In fact, characters in Whitespace-Bluespace… are composed of fragments, like memory itself. Adams’ work suggests that our memories, like episodic TV viewing, are an abstract palette. We construct a mosaic of understanding by assembling clues extracted from media—from our life experiences—allowing us to “know” people, places, and events by collating data, much of it reframed (often misunderstood). Her work uses passive and active media to investigate the tension between specificity and obscurity, emphasizing the distance between what is known and unknown.
Media:
Real-time cell phone image-manipulation "monotypes" (featuring both manual and digital glitch), output as different media forms (passive, active, intimate). This body of work is a mutative archive that can be adapted to suit the space where it is installed.
Installation:
1. Still images on paper
2. View-Masters - yep! Those rad, stereoscopic toys. Each reel is a separate piece.
3. 23,000+ image archive, printed on small pieces of paper - public, collaborative install. One section of the exhibition will house the entire archive as an interactive, viewer-installed collaborative piece. Attendees will be able to position their chosen image-moments as they see fit, further reshuffling and reframing each media memory, while still suggesting the "before" and "after" of a series of events. Allows for a dynamic, where viewers select and place image cells from the archive wherever they wish on the arvhice wall--random, yet extracted from a finite system of ...this will allow...
4. Videos - Silent, looping video art pieces designed to be shown on a television set, or projected (they are adaptable).
Artist Statement
Life is rush of contingencies. The wonderful, terrible sublime of “before” and “after,” a strange and delicate dance of relativity. As we commit experience to memory, details become blurred, lost, remixed—fact folded with sensation, sequencing lost to the abyss of recollection. Over time, we may even embellish, or crystallize moments, often losing more than we retain.
Memory formation relates to the way we engage television—we grab bits and pieces of information about characters and situations, often by viewing episodes out of order. We understand events by assembling a sensitive web of memories, culled, even appropriated, from different seasons. Like episodic TV viewing, we construct a mosaic by assembling clues extracted from the media flow—from our life experiences—allowing us to “know” people, places, and events by collating often disparate pieces of data, much of it reframed (often misunderstood).
Using cell phone photography in a real-time system of manipulation, I spent 8 months capturing digital “monotypes” from the TV screen, generating an archive of 23,000+ experimental images. These image-cells were mined from a personally poignant television series--Miami Vice, which I watched in its original context, during a time of personal loss and disruption. Using an obsessive, ritual system of watching and extracting, combined with manual and digital glitch, I suggest the imperfection of memory and our incomplete understanding of situations. These suspended moments are seemingly extracted from the “before” and “after” of an unclear, yet disturbing, system of events that vacillate between the almost-gained and almost-lost.
The characters, like memory, are composed of fragmented, episodic information, sampled and informed by our own recollection of other images in the installation. The viewer might begin to understand, but true clarity is denied. There is a tense passage of moment into moment, an endless catastrophe of “instants” presented as passive works on paper, active video and intimate View-Master spaces. My eroded heroes are denied resolution, forever stuck in transition, their lives suspended as frozen, oddly linked moments—undermined, human, uncertain, temporary.
Memory formation relates to the way we engage television—we grab bits and pieces of information about characters and situations, often by viewing episodes out of order. We understand events by assembling a sensitive web of memories, culled, even appropriated, from different seasons. Like episodic TV viewing, we construct a mosaic by assembling clues extracted from the media flow—from our life experiences—allowing us to “know” people, places, and events by collating often disparate pieces of data, much of it reframed (often misunderstood).
Using cell phone photography in a real-time system of manipulation, I spent 8 months capturing digital “monotypes” from the TV screen, generating an archive of 23,000+ experimental images. These image-cells were mined from a personally poignant television series--Miami Vice, which I watched in its original context, during a time of personal loss and disruption. Using an obsessive, ritual system of watching and extracting, combined with manual and digital glitch, I suggest the imperfection of memory and our incomplete understanding of situations. These suspended moments are seemingly extracted from the “before” and “after” of an unclear, yet disturbing, system of events that vacillate between the almost-gained and almost-lost.
The characters, like memory, are composed of fragmented, episodic information, sampled and informed by our own recollection of other images in the installation. The viewer might begin to understand, but true clarity is denied. There is a tense passage of moment into moment, an endless catastrophe of “instants” presented as passive works on paper, active video and intimate View-Master spaces. My eroded heroes are denied resolution, forever stuck in transition, their lives suspended as frozen, oddly linked moments—undermined, human, uncertain, temporary.
Additional information on how the real-time manipulation images were created:
Each night for 8 months, I did experimental photographic "monotypes" right from the television screen, making good use of the show's one-hour time slot and its watery, softened, broadcast form. I set rigid parameters for my manipulation times and methods. Rather than create images via binge-viewing, I slowed the process down, restricting the raw manipulations to an hour each day. This had a physical and conceptual iimpact on my life--preventing me from being out, from doing other things, tying me to the TV screen each night--sometimes against my will. Different events, moods, daily affects--these all impacted the way I engaged the televisual language on a given evening.
The ubiquity of both the cell phone camera and television...
Limiting myself to an hour of generating imagery created both tension and frustration--some nights I was energized, wanting more and more! Other nights, my life circumstances bogged me and the project was dogged, nagging, relentless. When I felt like pushing the hourly gather, I curated and glitched selected moments, rather than finding a way to excavate more raw imagery. Thus, the project was all-consuming. Gathering became an intense daily ritual that lengthened the scope of the project, requiring focused introspection and systematic gathering. After gathering, I also put some of the stills through additional glitch manipulation, to purposefully lose, obscure and erode key information that might have provided clarity and resolution. I watched the series through twice, researching and taking notes, then on the third time through, one hour each day, I extracted particular kinds of imagery--one episode at a time.
The result is a 23,000 + image archive, composed of the original, real-time manual glitch (experimental photographs) and the digital glitch images. It makes prolific use of the "before" and "after" I describe in my essay - Before, After - Part 1, and the characters are trapped in a terrible cycle, suspended within an indeterminate space of the impending and the retreating. Some of the experimental photographs, rather like monotypes in their single-shot pull from the screen, are left raw. These don't undergo any additional manipulation, and are prescient, alive. Others receive glitch treatment. Once gathered, processing the archive took an entire month of daily unpacking. Thinking like a printmaker, I then turned each of the image-cells into passive, active, direct and indirect outputs.
Each night for 8 months, I did experimental photographic "monotypes" right from the television screen, making good use of the show's one-hour time slot and its watery, softened, broadcast form. I set rigid parameters for my manipulation times and methods. Rather than create images via binge-viewing, I slowed the process down, restricting the raw manipulations to an hour each day. This had a physical and conceptual iimpact on my life--preventing me from being out, from doing other things, tying me to the TV screen each night--sometimes against my will. Different events, moods, daily affects--these all impacted the way I engaged the televisual language on a given evening.
The ubiquity of both the cell phone camera and television...
Limiting myself to an hour of generating imagery created both tension and frustration--some nights I was energized, wanting more and more! Other nights, my life circumstances bogged me and the project was dogged, nagging, relentless. When I felt like pushing the hourly gather, I curated and glitched selected moments, rather than finding a way to excavate more raw imagery. Thus, the project was all-consuming. Gathering became an intense daily ritual that lengthened the scope of the project, requiring focused introspection and systematic gathering. After gathering, I also put some of the stills through additional glitch manipulation, to purposefully lose, obscure and erode key information that might have provided clarity and resolution. I watched the series through twice, researching and taking notes, then on the third time through, one hour each day, I extracted particular kinds of imagery--one episode at a time.
The result is a 23,000 + image archive, composed of the original, real-time manual glitch (experimental photographs) and the digital glitch images. It makes prolific use of the "before" and "after" I describe in my essay - Before, After - Part 1, and the characters are trapped in a terrible cycle, suspended within an indeterminate space of the impending and the retreating. Some of the experimental photographs, rather like monotypes in their single-shot pull from the screen, are left raw. These don't undergo any additional manipulation, and are prescient, alive. Others receive glitch treatment. Once gathered, processing the archive took an entire month of daily unpacking. Thinking like a printmaker, I then turned each of the image-cells into passive, active, direct and indirect outputs.
Short Bio:
Ren Adams works cross-media, from installations to hybrid printmaking, video, painting and sound. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Lesley University College of Art & Design and her BFA in Studio Art (Printmaking) from the University of New Mexico, with honors. Adams exhibits internationally, often participates in collaborations and print exchanges, and regularly publishes visual art, poetry and critical writing. Her recent publications include: The Bombay Gin, The Hand Magazine, First Class Lit and Fickle Muses. Adams is also a UC Berkeley Alumni Scholar, a frequent visiting artist, lecturer, resident critic, juror and instructor, and she completed a lithography internship at Tamarind Institute. Recent solo exhibitions include Desert (Loss) (2015), Alchemy of Image (2014) and Whitespace-Bluespace - Televisual Memory and the Implied Catastrophe (2016). Adams occasionally teaches through the University of New Mexico and is a member of the New Media Caucus, Southern Graphics Council International, the New England Monotype Guild, and the former president and coordinator of several regional arts organizations. She also received a merit award from the Art Institute of Boston in 2013 and continues active experimentation in printmaking, new media and interdisciplinary approaches.
View longer bio here.
View longer bio here.
Supporting Documents:
View or download my current CV / Artist Resume.
Press and publications can be found in my CV
Press and publications can be found in my CV