Amsterdam to Istanbul

This project studied form and texture in a desire to challenge the flatness of sensory experience in metavirtuality. The prints, prose, and code presented here are my remaining souvenirs from that transient place.

——————————

a web artifact by arebee.cc

built for chromium-based browsers

In the

dark,

you can

hear the

light

I decided to seek out art that I only could experience in the real world. Niche. Obscure. No universal critical acclaim. The more local and unlauded, the better. And that's how I found myself in the lot in Northern Amsterdam where Nxt Museum is, visiting an exhibition called "Still Processing.”

Much of the noise in the mainstream is about technology. It's the blanket covering everything. It's boring, boring, boorish. The summary is such: It's bad for us; it's addictive; it's causing major damage to our psyches and societies; yet, there's no escaping it. Always surface. Always empty. This is further underscored by the aesthetic deficit visibly inherent to technology-aided or technology-centric work.

Despite its immense capacity to blend mediums and bend the laws of physics in its abstractions, the digital artifact rarely has any underlying soul. It's almost predestined to be polished, sleek, modern, even when it tries to be otherwise. Not that any of these characteristics are inherently devoid of aesthetics, but the digital is quite amnesiac. It doesn’t know, remember, or care about the cultural canon. Nor does it consider its place in the current phase of cultural production and how it all builds a heritage collectively.

It’s easy to blame this bleaching of visual culture on the commercialization of the digital. But it's not namely just that much of technology's imperatives are commercial but rather that the psychological grip of those imperatives overshadows the potential of divergence or its possibility even.

All this to say, the majority of technology-based art that I had encountered before didn't leave much of a lasting mark. It was infected with the same dissociative texture that's chronic in consumer technology. It's incapable of communicating at a spiritual or visceral level. That is until I encountered some triumphant marriages of art and technology at Nxt Museum’s “Still Processing.”

With many of the pieces exhibited in dark rooms and playing with light to communicate, the artwork was able to elicit a distinct transcendent encounter in me. Of the ten works on display, four were the most profound:

  • Polynode XI by Lumus Instruments
  • Red Horizon by Gabey Tjon a Tham
  • ALL-TOGETHER-NOW by Children of the Light
  • Duration by Boris Acket

The common thread between all of these is that they did not employ the screen at all. They used more "primitive" light modalities to speak. And that made them much more articulate and precise in their message.

There's such an overload of visual stimuli and overpacking of information that technology not only enables but indulges and encourages. That's only exasperated now by the loss of reference and taste and the resulting over-reliance on bloated, drawling machine-generated slop. I'm not saying it's uncircumventable, but it's the default mode of the machine now. So creation through subtraction is requisite if we are to siphon a comprehensible message at all. That subtraction is effortless, or at least appears to be so, in the four non-screen-dependent artworks.

Polynode XI stunned me. A combination of light beams and pulses of sound running through an overhead LED light strip. The sequence runs for over 10 minutes. Its momentum, its gradual ascension to a crescendo, is hypnotic, resembling a heartbeat. The lights alternate between red and white. And they arrive through the strip like dashes that vary in length, — — — — , ——— ——— ——— ———, ———— - ———— — ———— - ————, and the encoded sound mirrors the length of the dashes, like morse code.

The flashes emerged from the far right and the far left, sometimes simultaneously. Sometimes they crashed when they met in the middle and sometimes they passed each other as they raced towards the other end. When the dash reached its conclusion, it sounded like scoring a point in an arcade game.

I was lucky enough to experience most of this artwork by myself, alone, in the dark room. The build up of each light/sound sequence was exhilarating. Especially with the red and white choice of color, it resembled the coursing of blood through streams. Its ability to evoke a visceral image in its abstractions made it coherent and legible, without imposing a perspective or worldview, or relying on its curatorial note to spell out and spoon-feed what it wants to say.

Polynode XI was set in the same room as, and against the backdrop of, Red Horizon.

Despite its misleading name, Red Horizon used white drops of light as its lexicon. Placed at the ends of 16 swinging pendulum arms, they also built momentum gradually to achieve a hypnotic, transfixing effect. But whereas Polynode XI only evoked the visceral, Red Horizon fully activated it.

Once the pendulums reached full speed spinning 360°, they left seared rings of light in your retinas. The swarming sound of the spin, along with the on/off/on/off/on/off of the light, the way the pendulum dangled suddenly after deceleration, it all continued to startle and tease the viewer. Like the internal buzz of electricity inside the brain, the remnants of thoughts singed on grey matter long after the neurons have stopped firing.

Then came
ALL-TOGETHER-NOW. Large hollow circles, suspended by invisible string, along a narrow long room.

Whereas the two former works moved with urgency and maneuvered momentum, the circles in ALL-TOGETHER-NOW were haloed by strips of warm light and spun leisurely, languidly, on their axes. Because there were stacked one behind the other behind the other, and they each spun arrhythmically. They created the illusions of eclipses, intersections, and overlaps. Since they were so large, you were encouraged to walk through the room and between the circles as they revolved, but I found the corner of the room the best vantage point.

In their circulation, they surrendered. Not from a lack of will or from being overpowered but out of a trust in the same cosmic laws of physics that held the earth spinning on its axis in the big unfathomable void. Picture ‘The Hanged One’. The ease of the circles was a model for mental repose amidst suspension. They almost took solace in the unalterable nature of physics, its inescapability. And so they were able to just be. Animated but not urgent or antagonistic, pendant but not powerless.

The final room, Duration, was arguably the most complex and layered, both in physical setup and message. It tried to communicate the non-linear nature of time.

Large

room

dark

cubic

Metal

|||||

pillars

|||||

scaffolded

in

|||||

a

|||||

grid

p

a

n

e

l

s

o

f

w

h

i

t

e

l

i

g

h

t

like

cascading

ladder

steps

They overlapped and overwhelmed comprehension, since the patterns were too condensed and rapid in pace to be discernible. Similar to Polynode XI light sequences were coupled with an echo, but it was more fragmented and arbitrary. Because it took on a more sterile approach to its highly abstract subject, Duration was hindered from crossing the threshold to profundity. Instead, it was a gateway theoretical explanation of non-linearity for the uninitiated.

“Still Processing” defined my first encounter with Amsterdam. It achieved the most difficult of endeavours: it was able to communicate beyond the unshakable weight of the canon and beyond the deafening noise of the moment it was born into.

My comprehension of legacy has long moved beyond landmarks, hallmarks, and attractions—they rarely yield any insight. They purport to contain traces of their place’s soul, but they growingly feel like barebone sketches that came to life but didn't quite get painted by reality. They’re stuck in the plot imposed on them, held hostage to the replication mechanisms of society, those that persist in reproducing the same story to maintain a continuity of narrative needed for sense-making in light of the grand crumble of civilization’s cognitive structures.

The pieces at Nxt Museum spelled a different story altogether, visceral and philosophical but without excessive cerebrality. They took you along the chain of thought so you could ponder together. And reminded you that your heart is still beating and the earth is still turning and in the dark rooms, you can hear the light.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Harp

Heaven

I once met a person who loves the harp. And he played it for us. And the music was beautiful. I try to go back to that place. Tucked away inside a former hospital complex, with only a roll-up banner outside with the concert times. I found the harp museum completely by coincidence. Long corridor. Take a right. It's cool when I walk in after my body had absorbed the sun. When I pierce through the veil from the earth where tourists eat waffles, I find myself in the harpist’s heaven with only half a dozen people.

After playing his first piece, under ambient amber light, the harpist greets us in French, then says "no one here speaks my language?" lightheartedly, in English. That little remark amused me so. I ask that question everyday too. In our plebeian tongue, he tells us he’d built all these harps himself, he’d composed all the music he played us himself, and the harp was the lady he’d had a love affair with for decades.

Watching him move across the stage to play five harps simultaneously for one composition was beyond anything I've ever encountered in the large concert halls and grand orchestras. Unadulterated cosmic energy channeled through a human without obstructions. A concentrated, absolute love. His fingers moved so mesmerizingly, speaking a language only he and the taut threads understood. He’d discovered what the harp could say, the messages wrapped around its strings, between the peaks and valleys of its sound waves.

It was the intimacy of creative energetic exchange on display.
I felt the miracle of existence and I dissolved.
The intellectual reflexes of my brain conceded their grip on me to something more profound and inarticulable.
I kept crying without realizing.
Everything we touch says: the divine is everywhere.

1

2

3

à la mode

I got the earliest ticket I could get to the Louvre and still that wasn’t early enough.
I speed-walked past
Nike,
Venus,
the Mona Lisa,
and all the immortal women to find my welcome gift from Paris: the Louvre’s first ever couture exhibition.

Dressed in head-to-toe pastel peony yellow, walking through the royal quarters, I encountered a hundred works of fashion that made me gasp, swoon, and clutch my imaginary pearls. The extravagance & excess of the spectacle was an assertion of excellence that's incontestable. After such a binge on beauty, what I remembered most are the details. A futuristic exoskeleton. Joan of Arc’s armour-dress. A gender bender suit that was red and blue. Balmain’s pearl and mesh and gold. Loewe’s beaded pug. Balenciaga’s minimal black in the boardroom. Solar capes in glass displays. An empress in red with botanical appliques. Too gorgeous to be captured with a camera, I committed them to memory and only took photos of two things that day: a yellow velvet boot by Louboutin, because it complemented my own outfit, and an opulent Dior coat embroidered with major arcana Tarot cards.

Still and motionless, the haute couture was mounted on mannequins but still full of vitality. Textures, colours, proportions, silhouettes. The language of fashion is inextricably tied to an adulation of the human form, in this case, specifically the female body. The nuances of the body as the canvas require such a deeper intelligence to visualize. They give all the components of an outfit a mission, a task, to accentuate, highlight, conceal, reveal, elevate, depress, reflect, transform, all in service of the body. We could naively argue that the artwork uses or subjugates the body for its own showboating, but if that is the case, then the piece had failed its objectives. It's only when the garment merges with the human form that it reaches the height of its expressiveness. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

1

2

3

Aboard the Bernina

I've never been so close to the skin of the mountain before. The rocks are gleaming chiseled muscles, sculpted. They sweat with the glaciers’ melt. The train snakes its way through the tunnels, hugging the mountain, disappearing into darkness only to emerge again over the vista.

Stop for ten minutes. Towers of needles. Larch, spruce, fir, and pine. The spiky frame around the turquoise in the valley. No photograph succeeds. The splendour overwhelms the camera.

In Tirano, I didn't realize latte is milk. I hadn’t been to a monolingual place in so long. Way-finding is so minimal, a few signs and no grand annals of history to flaunt. I walk through the quiet and retrace my steps in awe. Ward off Turtle Island’s fate of decay. The hidden and unfound must remain so.

1

Deutsch Delights

where transplanted greek pillars are, it’s sunday afternoon

wear red and fuschia galore

write in a notebook

weep and let tears cascade

watch a pinakothek field trip reel play

walk on bridges of ficus tree roots

whirl around feathered polar bears and bauhaus greats

wind cassette back to present with pencil

whistle with birds, tonight is a full moon

1

Dodge

and Burn

The four snapshots take five minutes to slide down the delivery slot of the photo booth. Developed analogue, they are grey tinted with a hint of sepia warmth, not pure black & white. The booth is outside the centre of photography. I meet marked up contact sheets for the first time. 2/0, +3/0, -1, 2x/5, et cetera, et cetera. Everywhere they talk about dying crafts. The reservoirs of knowledge are in the brains of the last few. The process is always the point. There are no quick hacks to outsmart physics. You must hold a piece of cardboard to dodge and burn. You move the sheet between different basins with tongs. You must move in a specific direction to manipulate the light. You must count the seconds to achieve the just right print.

Abstracted away from the laws of physics in an embodied way, my experience of photography treatment is so different, so digital, it might as well be an alien science. I remember now painstakingly I used to develop VSCO filter recipes to treat my Instagram catalogue. The compounding accumulation of every photo I'd shared required a visual cohesion. I could carbon date when I’d published a photo by what type of treatments I’d used. But now, it's been years since I've left all that zipped and archived in a hard drive that's tucked away. My modes of documentation have changed.

I hadn't taken a picture of myself in so long. When I draw the curtains shut and flash my smile, I see I'm getting older. I try to remember again how to smile, which side of my face looks better, how to tuck away my hair. The only audience in the booth is me.

1

2

Easter in the attic

A summer vacation afternoon, where the curtains sway and the sun submerges you into the bed. Time sense is suspended, or perhaps you remember that it never existed to begin with. Like you're in your mother's womb. If you could remember your fetus consciousness, pure and pre-brain, it'd just be vibration. The coursing of your mother's blood through your cells. You were only some cells. And your mother's blood is the sunrays.

In an attic, the slant of the ceiling stands between you and the sky. The cracked window funnels the photons. When the solar grazes your skin, you melt. No longer being. Only feeling. And you're outside your body. You're outside the earth. The birds call you back, remind you that you must sing. Only dissolve momentarily, but return to all that human noise. Remember that the music is transmuted noise. Remember what it's like to dance. A child who can't contain the motion. Your body wrings itself on the bed, squeezing the sun onto your bones. Easter is resurrection Sunday, and you're back from the dead.

1

2

The trees say hello

I find the Jordanian desert in Ljubljana. There are no more boundaries of space when archives of our creations are portable. I sign the guestbook and cry while watching the fingers of the pianist channel the sound only they can construct but the rest of us can only overhear. There's a carpet and a living room on the bridge over the river. None of this is surreal. All of this is surreal. I race to the forest and climb the mountain that overlooks the lake. Sitting on a tree stump at the edge, it would only take an inch to fall. But the leaves are dancing and flirting with me. Such an affection I've long longed for that I cry some more. The water sparkles and the wishes of the humans in the chapel are ringing in the sky.

1

Bronze dust

The tall boy looks at me with his piercing blue eyes. It's always hard to pretend I don't understand. We're walking through his old city and he's telling me about the buildings of the past. All the grand visionaries that left only some bricks and stone in their wake. Ottoman, Moorish, Art Deco, Renaissance. It's raining. He looks at me beneath his umbrella. I hide behind mine. "Does it make sense?" he asks as he drops me off to the skateboarder who’s a coppersmith. I sit at the anvil and learn to hammer at the bronze sheet. When people peer their heads in to ask him something in yet another tongue I don't understand, he tells them "she's learning." When I walk back home, the cobblestones gleam in the twilight.

1

braided beauty

Mina is the gorgeous actress who's my tour guide, so full of life. I can recognize youth now that I watch mine fleet. She charms the group, which is to say she charms me. She hands us the food tasters with her theatrical flourish. Banitsa, lyutenitsa, mekitsi. The words out of her mouth are sweet.

Dark, beautiful hair, middle parted and slicked back to a braid. A boat neck black top that called out the collarbones. Wide lively eyes. The stories she shares paint the streets. The food bribes of her grandma, what it was like when McDonalds came to the city, the dollhouse she's going to see with her boyfriend that weekend. She tells me my energy is bright and the echo bounces back.

Of all of Sofia's marvels, Mina left the deepest mark. At breakfast the next day I could still taste the syllables in her voice, ba-nit-sa.

1

2

Farewell for now

The sun gave me a farewell that’s immortalized in celluloid frames. Crossing the bridge over the Golden Horn, with the marble's fingerprint still over my spine, I saw the mosques adorning the sky. Seagulls painted the soundscape, and all that streaming traffic fell quiet in deference. The ferries whirred and buzzed but the earth was anchored like a seesaw at its perfect centrepoint. Those sunsets were in the blueprints of the grand buildings. The architects must have seen the vistas with the penciled silhouettes floating in the air. So many years later and the outlook is ageless. It'll be here even after we're all gone. When the city is a shell, and the tectonic plates collapse and all that remains is gaseous molecules floating in the vessel.

1