Digital Substance
Inspired by: Interface Culture:
How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create & Communicate, 1997
How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create & Communicate, 1997
Exhibited at:
Chelouch gallery, TLV, 2001
Chelouch gallery, TLV, 2001
The digital substance –
Tamar Schori 12/99
Tamar Schori 12/99
Our presence versus our absence in a changing world.
The digital world is differentiated from the physical world by several factors:
Time based activities are inherent in the digital product, on the other hand, in the physical world time happens outside the object.
Physical sensations are inherent in the physical world. We touch and move through an immediate space. The digital world simulates space through 2d representations of a 3d world. The interaction between the user and the digital world enables him to navigate through a system of symbols. The interaction in itself is the method of movement through the digital space.
Time based activities are inherent in the digital product, on the other hand, in the physical world time happens outside the object.
Physical sensations are inherent in the physical world. We touch and move through an immediate space. The digital world simulates space through 2d representations of a 3d world. The interaction between the user and the digital world enables him to navigate through a system of symbols. The interaction in itself is the method of movement through the digital space.
The physical world is finite. Objects are definite. In the digital world since all the elements are equally made by a set of zeros and ones everything is possible and everything is changeable.
The effort to detach the factors of the digital world and reenact them in the physical world revolves around the physical experience. The challenge is to create a non-definite surrounding that frees itself from the finite nature of our immediate reality.
Our immediate surrounding is perceived through our senses. It induces a physical experience. My thesis detaches the physical experience from the substance itself. The hypothesis claims that the physical experience can be induced through non-physical means.
The ability to insert the viewer’s point of view into the object and to create present sensitive environments may free our immediate surrounding from its physical limitations and finite qualities.
The digital phenomenon has emphasized the lost of a definite truth. Reality is no longer definite. It relies on a point of view. The digital phenomenon serves also as an alternative to reality. It offers all the factors of reality (time, space, places to go, things to do, things to buy, others to meet) while relaying on a fantasy-based participation of the user.
The gap between our physical state, sitting by the computer, and the digital activities we take upon ourselves is exactly the gap I want to bridge by creating direct experiences that are not inter-mediated.
Once these experiences will simulate or symbolize the essence of the digital world in the physical world the gap will vanish.
This aim is un-achievable. The worlds are too different and our role in each of them relays solely on the difference between the physical presence in the immediate world and our absence in the digital world.
Our presence undermines any existence of a multi level experience. The freedom of perception that is inherent in the digital world vanishes in the harsh light of the physical reality.
This is why the medium of art is so appropriate for such a venture. Like Don Kichote and many others nothing but the un-achievable could serve as an appropriate quest. The poetic and tragic effort to unite with the digital freedom while emphasizing our physical short hand existence is therefor the real subject of my work.