Aspect Ratio
A psychedelic dance of graphic patterns, an endlessly expanding sea of humanity, a lonely photographic particle of silver expanded to cinema format, a panoramic view of an unearthly landscape, a series of mirrors with cinematographic frame format, a huge enlargement of a subatomic tube, an animated manipulation of Google Earth, a flashing parade of thousands of colourful JPGs, a series of close-ups of the de CERN particle accelerator, or precisely a deeply human melodrama, reduced to the screen of an iPod: all images that belong to the same universe always waiting to be fathomed further.
The exhibition Aspect Ratio has as its starting point Powers of Ten (1977), the legendary and still very popular film by the designers duo Charles and Ray Eames. In this short film a simple photo of a picnicking couple is the starting point for journey through the cosmos and through the smallest molecules in the body. Based on the original idea by the Dutch educationalist Kees Boeke (Cosmic View, 1957), in this film version, the size of things is illustrated by the effect of adding or removing a zero on the end. Ten years ago the Eames film was selected for the Library of Congress because of its special cultural, historic and aesthetic meaning. The ‘decimal shift’ still remains a useful tool to help visualise the relativity of the cosmos; us in the universe and the universe in us.
By now technology has advanced a long way and artists are also finding new ways to explore classic notions such as dimension and scale. From nano-technological close-ups to cosmic grandeur, Aspect Ratio researches how visual art and science enter into a dialogue with as central stake: man as a measure in an expanding technological universe.
In dit verzamelprogramma
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Yota
A temporary monument, inspired by the buckytube, named after the philosopher Buckminster Fuller, whose method created the lightest, strongest, and mos -
My Frontier is an Endless Wall of Points
This psychedelic documentary literally animates mescaline drawings by Henri Michaux and his idea of a ‘venture into foreign territory’. -
The World as Will and Representation
A video movie of the artist’s archive of photographic images collected from the Internet. For exhibition purposes, the artist makes a video movie ever -
Particle Projection
The image of a silver particle produced by an electronic microscope is derived from a negative of a photograph documenting the restoration of the Atom -
The Spirit of Enquiry
A series of mandala-like images depicting the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the largest gathering of knowledge in the history of mankind, larger even -
Geo Goo
The Royal Parc of Brussels is well known for the Masonic compass in its ground plan. Jodi uses computer codes and online tools such as… -
The Surging Sea of Humanity
A stereograph of the crowd at the opening of the US Centennial Exposition of 1893 turns into a movie, into an enormous rugged 3-D landscape. -
Manifest Destiny
Silk-screened over an existing photograph, these pictures suggest a barren desert where some of the Mars mobiles have been tested. A study of close-up -
The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success
An I-pod sculpture shows the body of a man progressively filling with stains: quantity and position depend on the number of users (and country of… -
His Affair with Time
Ondák documented his young son’s growth over a number of years by making marks on a doorframe. By duplicating the image, he emphasizes the ephemeralit -
Aspect Ratio (Fisher)
Fisher deconstructs the machinery of cinema. This conceptual work consists of a series of mirrors cut to the proportions of various formats of film fr