Shreds of Existence
Dermod Kavanagh
Multimedia works
Wed Apr 7 - Sat Apr 24 2010
Opening Thursday 8 April 2010, 6-8pm
Our Impressions of the world lie at the tenuous intersection point of the senses on the canvas of our minds. Each sense informs and is informed by the others and the mind balances it all in a complex web of thesis and analysis. On the whole we believe this process brings us ever closer to a true and complete grasp of what is, yet we know our senses and our minds cannot be wholly trusted.
My work Shreds of Existence examines this intersection through multiple slow-phasing soundtracks and two digital slide projectors overlapping on the same screen. The fallibility of human perception is explored through the metaphor of digital images corrupted in the memory of a computer. The mind/sense interface is expressed in the tenuous link between all the elements of the work, while the part our senses play in our compulsion to make meaning is depicted through the use blurry photographs taken through dirty windows and the questionable relevance of the accompanying sound element. Somehow linking all is the meditative and the sublime, like some beautiful equation.
film clip of projection © Dermod Kavanagh
This work seeks to unpack ideas about human perception by exploring concepts (such as that of the dispassionate observer, true and accurate representation or death/permanence devoid of life) as applied to photography, but broadened to encompass other modes of recording. It deconstructs photography itself with reference, not only to the practical and theoretical history of the medium, but also the seemingly unlimited future pathways of photography and digital media. Through an ambiguity of sound and vision the work implies meanings the mind nearly grasps. It tips its hat to science and technology on the way to a philosophical and imaginative engagement with these ideas based on the ways we think about thinking, perceive perception and understand mortality.
