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Mind zapping bits–a natural history museum of the future
Michael Rees
"From Ear to Ear"
Central Fine Arts
http://www.centralfinearts.com
Technological culture has crossed all lines. Science progresses rapidly.
The changes are swift, far-reaching, revolutionary, fascinating,
alluring, worrisome and overwhelming, so much, that they can no longer
be stopped. Historically, these times of change are replete with
extensive cultural activity, where everything familiar is given a new
meaning. New technology permeates all fields of life and culture,
infiltrating everywhere–even our own bodies.
The body continues to be the center of attention in a world of art,
which for a long time now has been exploring the issue of identity. Yet,
the questions posed by the human body and human identity and their
representation alters as new technologies in the fields of
telecommunication, nanotechnology, and biotechnology affects the
discourse about the policy of identity.
The exhibition "From Ear to Ear" indicates some social and scientific
tendencies that emerge in the digital era: tendencies that render a new
perception of body and self.
Michael Rees endeavors to reconstruct the meaning of being "human" by
posing the body as a basis for a different mode of organization and
thinking. Harnessed into an alternative cultural system, the body is
deconstructed and reconstructed repeatedly during the artistic process.
He combines a scientific anatomy with a fantastic anatomy to create
internal body fragments that are rational and irrational, familiar and
unfamiliar.
We can recognize some of the body parts such as ears and scalps but
definitely not the way they are juxtaposed.
Organ fragments are Rees' virtual raw materials. Virtual, because they
are located in his computer. There, onscreen, he can "play" with these
hybrid models. By using CAD (computer aided design) software he can mix,
tear, clone, and distort the organs and determines their relationship to
each other in three-dimensional space. Then, through a RP (Rapid
Prototyping) manufacturing process the wire frame model is changing
Accumulation State and becomes a "real" sculpture in our "real" space.
The process of Rapid Prototyping creates three-dimensional sculpture by
laser forming; one 1/2000-inch thin layer is created in each step, on
top of another until the "lab object" is appearing.
The automated production enables the creation of highly precise complex
forms with fine-quality surfaces. Finely, in addition to the printed
computerized model, those creatures of mind-zapping bits are placed on
pedestals in the exhibition space.
The display space becomes a documentary site of hybrid artistic,
scientific, medical, ethnographic and poetical images. One can walk
among these hybrids and contemplate the remodeling of the human body.
This documentary site functions as a natural history museum but in an
opposing time direction. While the natural history museum invites us to
explore "extinct species" of the past, Rees's display space invites us
to explore the new possible species of the future.
You can establish the identity of natural museum artifacts by
recognizing their skeleton–"oh, this is a dinosaur!", but what can we
say about Rees's bony structures?
What would the whole body, that the displayed fragments belong to, look
like? Will it be possible for such a creature to exist? Is it possible
for it to exist today? Is it right or wrong to open our bodies to the
new technological invasion? Do we pollute our private property or
improve it by hosting the artificial?
Today it is a fact; the body ceases to be the last frontier. Actually,
it has been broken long before the transplant revolution started–ever
since Technology allowed the body's expansion and elaboration through
prostheses which cling to the skin and respond to touch, such as the
Personal Computer, the Walkman, the Cellular Phone and the Contact
Lenses.
However, Rees is trying to produce a new kind of body, one that does not
exist. He assumes in advance the virtual body, and from that point, he
comes back to the corporeal body; from the pixels to the body cells. He
is not interested in the body as a fixed exterior covering, or as a
static shape; nor is he interested in conserving the taxidermy body.
Instead, he prefers to put on surgeon's gloves and to turn his studio
into a research laboratory, a place where he can investigate and change
the body in semi-medical terms.
Rees tears the "Cybernetic Strait Jacket" and peeps inside to find out
what is inside. In other words, he casts the body from the skin and
deals with its content. This is exactly what is done in medical
simulations. If the medical simulation main purpose is to see the
interior landscape from the outside, Rees's work allows us to see the
exterior from the inside. By chancing our viewpoint, he presents his way
of deconstructing the subject.
