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INSTALLATIONS

Big Man

Yane Bakreski, Michelle Stewart, Peter Stewart
24th International Symposium on Electroni
c Art, ISEA2018
Durban Art Gallery, June 25-30, 2018, Durban, South Africa

Photographs by Christo Doherty

There is no question that this installation, in its scale, its mode of address, and its content, asked profoundly poignant political questions, in this case, about the meaning of personal power and the effects of political corruption on the lives of ordinary South Africans. It was also one of the most compelling works in the "Other Realities" program, using a powerful design and making effective use of technology which drew large audience who stood beneath the screens of the installation, attracted by the complex patterning of looped video images across the multiple screens and the striking subject matter.

Prof. Christo Doherty

Deputy Director of School: Art Research, The Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

The installation was a valuable contribution to the curated exhibition at the Durban Art Gallery and the broader cultural program of ISEA2018. Not only in its conceptual technical presentation in line with the technology focus of the works on show but with the strong locally relevant statement around corruption of power, both in the South African and international context. This artwork was a successful fit with the ISEA2018 subthemes and overall curatorial intention of both the exhibition and the discourse of digital art as locally relevant investigation and statement. In this way the work presents a worthy creative output for the research and development of this local artistic discipline and discourse.

Marcus Neustetter
Artistic Director - ISEA2018 Durban, Director: The Trinity Session

Augmented Abstraction

24th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA2018
Durban Art Gallery, June 25-30, 2018, Durban, South Africa

Photographs by Christo Doherty

​The subject of the installation is inter-spatiality in art. The critical challenge is to detach color (sensations) from form (representation) and make the creative process aboveboard, i.e., deal openly with the audience. “Augmented Abstraction” deals with creating a simple Augmented Reality (AR) system designed to create an immersive environment a computer simulates. Consisting of a camera, a computational unit, and a display, the system is run on a tablet PC using a built-in camera. Using marker-based tracking, it captures the marker, which is digitally painted nude, depicted in a mode of everyday visibility, and displayed on a large TV screen. The augmentation is in 3D, consisting of multiple parallel offset planes (parallel to the marker), holding the Photoshop layers, i.e., different abstract color patches, color patterns, brushstrokes, etc., produced during the nude painting process, thus creating complex 3D abstract permutations. By using AR technology, the final result is a chance to simultaneously observe the real world, represented in the mode of everyday visibility, and the virtual elements that exemplify the idea or the abstract code.

Augmented Abstraction

Ohrid Summer Festival, 2016
University of Information Science and Technology "St. Paul the Apostle" Ohrid, Macedonia

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