Halcyon Gallery opened it’s new premium location in London with an exhibition by the digital artist Dominic Harris. This was of interest due to its immersive character (since I am at a point where I am considering ways to present my own work), it’s use of technology and particularly (of course) AI.
Harris uses “machine learning to create interactive artworks that have provoked fresh considerations of nature” (Financial Times) and it the construction of the natural has been my primary focus this year.
We share another interest in the reality of colour – Harris uses butterflies a lot in his work – often grids of them as if in a vitrine, but gently beating their wings instead of morbidly pinned down. “A butterfly’s colour does not come from pigmentation. In fact, the wing itself is translucent, but as light passes through and refracts off the scales it creates a shimmering illusion called ‘structural colour'” (Financial Times). Harris uses multiple layers hand-painted with a digital brush to reproduce this effect, which is then brought to “life” with code.
At the touch of the viewer the butterfly is activated and flits off its spot on a tour of the screen, before gently coming back to land. In an extension of the artist-artwork-viewer triangle, and indeed the concept of performance art, Harris sees the “viewer becoming a performer within the artwork” (Halcyon Gallery). This immersive element is something I have been investigating for my work – partly because for me interaction between the viewer and the artwork is important; but also because this dimensional ability to move around and experience with other senses such as sound and touch is something that distinguishes nature from traditional artistic representation, and hence something that makes attempts to provide such encounters to the viewer very valuable.
Harris’s touch-sensitive landscapes allow the viewer to influence the environment they behold by swiping across them. From our anthropocentric viewpoint there is, therefore, a message – the natural presented with shimmering beauty is under our control. More deeply, however, it is unclear to me whether this responsibility is communicated via the work, or whether the idea of landscape as playground is reinforced.
Harris therefore understands the importance of the aesthetic in drawing the viewer in, and manages to hold the attention for longer using interactive, digital animation that offers a different experience to the static, flat print. Beyond this, however, there is perhaps a question of whether something deeper and more lasting lies behind the glossy energy of the work. Halcyon Gallery president Paul Green states impeccable intentions “‘You don’t have to buzz to get in, unlike some commercial galleries. Interaction with art should not be for the privileged few, and although public galleries provide free exhibitions, why can’t commercial ones aim to be accessible too? I love the gallery being busy as it means we are being true to our mission to work with incredible artists that change the way we perceive the world.’” (The Sunday Times). Standing in Mayfair, however, it is hard to escape the sense of a hollow core to the extremely slick exterior.
To be fair, this feeling is also interrogated – most successfully, perhaps, by the title piece of the exhibition Feeding Consciousness, which shows a tower of screens with representations of the top five google searches. Depressingly, this was dominated by football and media stars, a rather damning visual demonstration of how our focus is distracted from the main issues facing us. A more obvious but perhaps less effective attempt to question the nature of capital, Limitless was a tower of golden blocks representing shares which revealed the CEO behind the company if you touched them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- https://www.halcyongallery.com/exhibitions/71-feeding-consciousness-dominic-harris/ (Accessed 20.6.2023)
- https://www.halcyongallery.com/news/79-how-to-spend-it-the-financial-times/ (Accessed 20.6.2023)
- https://www.halcyongallery.com/news/86-the-sunday-times-halcyon-gallery-launches-its-new-space-in-mayfair/ (Accessed 20.6.2023)
Level 3.1 Learning Log 