GRA is delighted to announce
From can see to can’t see
Digital landscapes
9th September 2021 - 21st October 2021
An NFT exhibition on SuperRare
Andy Holden, Eyes in Space (Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will), NFT
James Scott Brooks Rebecca Harper
Andy Holden Hannah Murgatroyd Lottie Stoddart
Phoebe Unwin Douglas White
Traditional ways of seeing are based on geometric perspective - shared by human vision, painting and film. New technologies have collapsed these physical distances and so uprooted the familiar patterns of perception on which our culture and politics have been grounded. The distinctions between near and far, between an object and a horizon against which the object stands out have been erased by the real-time electronic transmission of information. If information from any point can be transmitted with the same speed, the concepts of near and far, horizon, distance and space itself no longer have any meaning. This is all familiar territory - thirty years ago Paul Virilio, in his essay Big Optics, mourned the destruction of distance, geographic grandeur and the vastness of natural space - the vastness which guaranteed a time delay between events and our reactions. (Lev Manovich, 1996 Cinema and Telecommunication/Distance and Aura).
This crisis of seeing, the instability of relations between subject and object of vision, first led to film’s penetration into every aspect of contemporary existence – even the organization of our cities. Cinematisation produced a ‘flattened’ public sphere, in which the three-dimensional space of the city square was absorbed into the surface of the screen. New technologies have caused a further diminishing and finally complete elimination of spatial distance, the distance between the subject who is seeing, and the object being seen. Through this flattening and the dislocation of time and place, we have found that the unceasing spectacle of the urban and natural environment, stripped the human eye of its ability to look. As a result, the gaze was directed from us, rather than by us.
We might feel that we can grasp the majesty of the pyramids, the beauty of a far-flung wilderness, or the haunting atmosphere of an interior, but, if experienced through a screen, our understanding is distorted. In this second SuperRare exhibition with GRA, the artists consider natural and man-made environments, interior and exterior landscapes, and investigate the possibilities and distortions of the new technologies on our ways of understanding the world around us. They consider the magical possibilities of the digital realm as a positive companion to ‘real’ experience. They explore what it is to experience and be confused by it.
Lottie Stoddart