In ‘time slice’ crooks took ‘thin slices’ from moving & still images and re-combined them to achieve a conceptually similar but perceptually different in our viewing of this ‘space / time’ continuum.
I am looking at Crooks on recommendation after last weeks review. I never set out to make work concerned with the 4th dimension, but this was brought up years ago in my undergraduate degree. I use long & multiple exposure, reflection, blur and the surreal as visual aids to achieve what i want ‘timbre’ (or tone colour….emotionally) wise.
So let’s look at ‘Time Slice’. I actually saw this at Samstag, Adelaide. The included image (Static No. 12) was the one that drew me to the exhibition and was the one I was most enamoured with. Kind of ‘The Matrix’ mixed with digital morphing with the comic figure Plastic Man with the visual equivalent of trance music…..an ordinary middle aged man performing martial arts orchestrated to form a kind of a ballet.
I like it…its very cool and I hadn’t seen it before in the art world but I don’t think it really triggers a perceptual shift in our viewing of the space/time continuum. I think the ‘underlying rhythms and patterns of physical motion’ are revealed anytime anybody wishes to slow down and look. Or maybe it’s just the films, videos and general media I watch everyday.
Digital works that use a lot of cool effects to stretch, warp, morph, multiply & lag, Crooks himself said about the work ‘I am not sure what the use of this work is’. I think once galleries get involved sometimes the artists work might get ‘re-purposed’ towards the viewer rather just an interest of the artist.
I loved ‘Static No. 12’ but I did not like some of the other works of commuters, shoppers, sporting crowds etc that were stretched bean stalk thin. City pedestrians pixilated to a spectacular degree. Yet it doesn’t alter my perception of space and time at all. In fact, it was super familiar to me. I was emotionally touched on some level, recognising my hometown even in this ‘altered perception’ both by the audio (slowed down train announcements) and the visuals. When you have lived in Adelaide for about 3 years by now, it’s nice for your reality to be shifted to the city you know best in the entire world….by a STA voice over or familiar sites.
In ‘Parabolic’, Crooks explores the cyclical nature of time ‘rotating it on its axis’ by way of panorama’s that swirl around and warp in slow motion. I feel this work was much more successful in exploring time through motion. And just simply being entertaining and interesting rather than changing my perception of something. And that is ok. Art for arts sake.
