Month: January 2012

For Photofile #68

“Brad Miller and Mackenzie Wark have collaborated to produce dimensional aphorisms: “High Fidelity: the complete relationship – to love and to lie; to be loved and deceived”. At the appropriate rollover the voice reiterates: “to love and to lie; to be” as a coda of the original – until the mouse rolls off, returning some attention to the richly crafted backdrop. This is a visual backdrop with full stereophonic accompaniment, employing the full gamut of sampled and electro-synthesised loops, prepared with contributions from Jason Gee, Derek Kreckler and Brendan Palmer.

The visual backdrop over which each aphorism hovers is the digital equivalent of a medieval tapestry. These are mostly flat surfaces which have been texture value-added in Photoshop, (with some algorithmic conclusions to Mandelbrot’s work on Fractals). There are also surfaces directly re-purposed from Miller’s earlier seminal work, Digital Rhizome including the ‘infini-d worm hole’ three-dimensional forms that featured so centrally in that hypercarded piece. In an encounter with Rhizome, an early exploration of hypermedia (now called multimedia), it is soon realised that whilst the sequence is the unique result of how each interaction proceeds, the process of interacting is learnt to influence progress but not ‘control’ it. This is the case too with Planet. “