Hervisions – The Art of No Likes, Phase 2: Sandra Crisp

Hervisions - The Art of No Likes, Phase 2: Sandra Crisp

The Art of No Likes, Phase 2
Scratch the Surface and I’ll follow you: Surveillance and Censorship at your Mercy

Phase 2 will consider the ways in which surveillance and censorship cut through acts of image-making, dissemination and digital communication. It will reflect on the possibilities of circumventing or disrupting the cold stare of unwanted witnesses, including systems of data-harvesting that are ingrained into the fabric of the digital infrastructures that we use. How are time-based media works in dialogue with these gazes, how may they hide, and how dextrous can they be as they move online? How can we undercut capitalist superstructures whilst employing their instruments? Phase 2 will explore how the ways that we curate and communicate are inflected with these uncertainties. Through the autonomy of digital excavation. A symbiosis of new labour and protest are dilated. These works offer a re-imagined ‘birds-eye view’ in response to the themes of observation and suppression.

Sandra Crisp

Here we present new versions of perpetual browse_r and perpetual browse_r 2 from artist for the residency and the related Data_scape project with a small selection of zoom images from the aforementioned works.

Perpetual browse_r
The video clips are used to ‘texture map’ the surfaces of 3d models. Where free screencasting software called Active Presenter is used to capture media clips from YouTube, various international news channels and other discovered videos. Screencasting is a technique that captures all the action on a monitor screen and generates a digital recording of computer screen output. Clips are later intensely edited/ cropped/ collaged and end up as small moving image fragments in the final project.
Newsreel and documentary media fragments resulting from online searches populate dynamic virtual structures, forming a browser-type interface situated between real and imaginary virtual worlds – Revealing visual information in constant flux, mirroring how we browse the Internet immersed in transient online information, continually switching between one webpage/ app and the next, processing multiple visuals and text.

Each recycled clip also forms a time marker, an archive or digital memory indicating a specific point in time. The video works re-presents media we’re all digesting and circulating simultaneously via 24/7 rolling news, social media etc, so edited clips glimpsed briefly in the video will hopefully resonate on a subconscious or conscious level with the viewer.

Data_scape
Just before the start of Data_scape image project in 2019 Crisp was thinking about how algorithms are increasingly used online but remain hidden, working behind the scenes. Also, how content is often delivered to us via data tracking, in social media feeds and search engine results for example, determining what we do and don’t see.

At the same time global systems seemed to be altering in unnerving ways. The climate crisis and the UK leaving the EU generated a sense of disintegration. This became a strong conceptual input for the project, and it is this sense of personal unease that became embedded in Data_scape images, resulting in unfamiliar and unstable looking 3D structures. These ambiguous forms are situated between object and landscape in virtual space. Downloaded/ borrowed visual fragments are also used as surface modifiers to deform 3d structures in Blender. Crisp uses the ‘Duck Duck Go’ search engine rather than Google to construct an archive of borrowed images, as it does not store the users previous search terms or preferences.

Working with Internet debris, processing it and then sending it back out into the Internet again, Crisp’s work lies in a feedback loop of content distribution and circulation.

Zoom images
In this small collection of zoom images, embedded and layered detail is revealed – such as the tiny bump mapped graphic emoticons in the Data_scape-137bb zoom. Micro details are not usually visible when the full image is viewed online, only when zoomed-into on a desktop monitor screen. There is always a compromise with image loading/ web page display and file compression so this detail is usually lost online. When viewing the full scale images (approx. 5760 pixels wide) on a monitor able to zoom in and out flexibly in a way that is reminiscent of mathematical Fractals such as Mandelbrot, where intense detail is revealed the further into the image travelled. This zooming process utilises spatial depth afforded by working digitally onscreen so for this reason Crisp been developing and fascinated by the possibilities of using 3D models in many different projects.
The layered intensity and high saturation of detail in the artists images is also important and a result of testing the limits of the actual the hardware/ software worked with, suggesting a sense of vastness and the scale of data on the web.

Read about the project: The Art of No Likes

Hervisions - The Art of No Likes, Phase 2: Sandra Crisp

The Art of No Likes, Phase 2 Scratch the Surface and I’ll follow you: Surveillance and Censorship at your Mercy

Sandra Crisp

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The Art of No Likes, Phase 2
Scratch the Surface and I’ll follow you: Surveillance and Censorship at your Mercy