[x] A diffraction of past/stability and present/dynamism on Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen

[B. Bogart]

Hello All!

Apologies if some of you received this message twice! I'm writing to 
announce a new public artwork showing from *December 17th to 26th every 
day from 9am to 4pm on the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen*. This 
work is a commission by Grunt Gallery and there will also be a short 
exhibition concluding my residency at Grunt Gallery from January 6th to 
22nd; also keep an eye out for the announcement of my artist talk. I 
hope you get a chance to see this 7.5 hour machine learning generated 
site-specific artwork on the West side of Kingsway between 10th and 
Broadway.

*A diffraction of past/stability and present/dynamism*

On the wet dark dreary days, do we relish in the greens and the smell of 
rain, or do we retreat into imagined days of warmer pasts? The built and 
natural worlds around us are constantly evolving and transforming. While 
attending to the changes from moment to moment can we see the boundary 
between this moment and our past or future? Are we even in the present, 
or are we immersed in our predictions and simulations, always using 
samples of the present to validate imagined pasts and futures? These are 
some of the questions that are asked through this work. “A diffraction 
of past/stability and present/dynamism” is a study of time and movement 
at the MPCAS. Source footage was shot from the MPCAS during the long 
days of summer capturing the dynamism and colour of the site. The 
footage archives a window in time, documenting the movement of plants, 
clouds and animate life as humans and non-humans go along with our routines.

The structure of the work is determined by an analysis of human / 
non-human and natural / artificial movements, resulting in a continuum 
of dynamism to stillness. Areas of stillness diffuse into soft gradients 
of colour that undulate over time; these gradients are demarcated by the 
strong edges and readability of areas of stillness. Augmenting this 
structure are the discontinuities of the present moment that interrupt 
the smoothness and consistency of the composition. Through this trace of 
the present the viewer may pick out the shape of cars and people moving 
through the frame, but this subtlety is overwhelmed by drastic changes 
in colour. The cloud-like fields that advance and retreat from frame to 
frame are determined by colour values of the present where the source is 
almost entirely veiled in abstraction. A taxi-cab entering the frame 
does not appear yellow, and yet washes the image in yellow. A cloud 
blowing over is barely noticeable, but saturates the image in teal. 
Through these waves of colour and luminosity the viewer may realize this 
bright summer ‘present’ is in fact another moment of the past; a sample 
of the summer collected by a machine and reconstructed as an imagined 
past and present.

-- 
B. Bogart, PhD
they/them
www.ekran.org

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