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1 Giuliana Bruno, "Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner", in Alien Zone, ed. Annette Kuhn, London: Verso, 1990, p.193. 2. Elissa Marder, "Blade Runner's Moving Still", Camera Obscura 27, September 1991, John Hopkins University Press. p.102 |
Slippery Traces: The Postcard Trail
Slippery Traces is a non-linear, visual narrative in which the viewer navigates through a web of interconnected postcards that are classified and linked according to literal and metaphoric properties. Each postcard contains approximately five "hot spots", or links to about ten other images. The user constructs a viewing sequence by clicking the mouse on a hot spot of interest in the current image which then leads to another image. The resultant sequence of linked images can be reviewed to examine the evolving "meta-narrative" and the particular connections derived through one's choices. The postcards in this project were selected from my collection of over 2000 postcards. These were gathered over a period of twenty years mostly through visits to second-hand stores and flea markets. Following the initial selection of images, the postcards were grouped into 24 categories. This process of classification lead to the emergence of topics such as nature/culture, colonialism, the future, military, industry, the exoticization of the Other, scenic views, morality tales and others. Images that could not have a category of their own were grouped into the closest thematic area. By inserting these images that stretch the meaning of the grouping, a dialogue ensues that extends the categories' function from simple classification to that of narrative. The intent underlying my selection of postcards was to provide an overview, a world view, both cultural and ideological in terms of how the mid-20th century has been represented photographically within the framework of global development, tourism and cultural exchange. Other criteria included culturally significant or relevant subject matter or visually interesting compositions that express a perception based on the photographic paradigm. The selection does not aim to represent the totality of 20th-century historical experience. I was limited by what was at hand, as well as by the necessity of curtailing the overall size of Slippery Traces to eventually fit on a CD-ROM. In the early 1970's, fine arts photographic investigations focused on the development of a personal way of seeing. Postcards, which were understood as highly conventionalized iconic signs produced according to economic demands, notably tourism, were deemed to be empty of aesthetic value derived from a personal vision. When the same postcards were looked at from a critical, social perspective, they became more meaningful. Postcards, being a condensation of cultural expectations and beliefs, are ideologically charged. They are coded expressions of how the culture that produces them looks at the world. They are coded representations of the possible and the impossible (the real and the imaginary). They are mythic, totemic samples, or traces whose meanings are revealed over time, allowing the ideological narratives and semiotic coding to rise to the surface. With time, their narratives become transformed, reconstituted through newer interpretations, their meanings slip into other readings. II Slippery Traces had its roots in a two-projector slide show created to explore the ways that the meanings of images change when juxtaposed with other images. Images are normally seen in relation to each other, and like words positioned together in a sentence, they oscillate each other, slightly expanding, re-adjusting, imperceptibly transforming their meaning through contrast, association, extension, difference, etc. Transferred to the non-linear dynamic environment of the computer, the shifts in meaning are exponentially increased as the images are freed from their slide-tray linear positions, to be constantly resituated in relationship to each other as determined by criteria defined in the computer code. The result is an imaginary three-dimensional, nerve-cell-like membrane network in which all images are interlinked with over 2000 connections criss-crossing to form a unified whole. Connections, or hot spots have something thematically in common with the image they call-up. Each time the viewer clicks on a hot spot to move to another image, he or she weaves a path in this dense maze of connections that will be recorded in a database. One of the project's aims is to have viewers follow their own desires within an environment predefined by my perceptual filters. By perceptual filters, I mean not only the way I have categorized the postcards but essentially the way they function within the program's structure - a way of looking as opposed to the actual content of the postcards. The conditions of this looking have been encoded by computer programming, specifically by usage of dynamic database structures. Databases which are at the core of our social institutions - from marketing to police records to mailing lists - exist as a result of statistical data generated by our actions, and are used to redefine our cultural environment. Slippery Traces appropriates these statistical organizing structures and uses them to create an opening for analysis of such techniques. In addition, the navigation and sequencing flow of Slippery Traces incorporates the form and function of database structures as a creative device, and underscores a philosophical approach to computer programming as aesthetic practice. The interface design of Slippery Traces anchors the act of looking in a particular way. Like the technological looking exemplified by vision machines or as in the movie "Terminator", the interface emphasizes a "looking with intent" or "search and capture". In this constantly moving, fragmented looking environment, the viewer has to literally stop the act of "looking" (by freezing mouse movement) to see the whole image. The movie Blade Runner's image-analyzing machine through which Deckard, the protagonist, enters the replicants photograph to search for clues, serves as one of the key models for Slippery Traces . Deckard uses a technological "prosthetic visual device"2 to penetrate the photographic image, disrupting the spatial boundaries of the traditional photograph by moving and turning around within it. He forces the image to reveal to him a woman's face, something that he is looking for but that initially was not in the image - he re-invents the image to match his desire. Alain Robbe-Grillets L'année dernière à Marienbad serves as an important reference model for Slippery Traces' narrative flow, specifically in terms of a matrix of non-linear connections. The Slippery Traces structure draws from the films use of a shuffling of time and space where past, present, here and there are weaved together and images are recycled in different sequences to produce different meanings. In essence, the interactive operational mode situates the narrative development in the viewer's hands. In the words of Robbe-Grillet, the viewer is positioned to invent in his turn the work. | ||