Desert Keys


On the Greenhouse residency at Fowlers Gap provided by Arc COFA, I spent two weeks in Australian desert winter experimenting with morphic resonance.  Though the original aim was to only animate objects of nature and their light reflection, I was pulled back to the human form no matter how far I tried to get away from it.  Noticing anthropomorphism in plants and landscapes, and animating them as such, was the key to familiarity with the video object.  Without it there seemed to be no reference point to the videographic landscape. Even hand holding the camera reveals human presence, nature can never be alone, unless in an imaginary state.  Realising the particalisation of digital landscape is only at most, particalisation of light, it is not in any way related to actual matter.  So, to anthropomorphise just to satisfy the juvenile perspective of the human is habitual.  The desire to penetrate matter is a scientific problem.  So now the digitally purist, particle landscape is flecked with human behaviour, the environment is only seen through bifocal eyes, this is close to me, this is far away from me, this is in my path, and the individual who is only capable of seeing hybrids of their own kind everywhere, reconstructing the environmental as it relates or becomes part of them.  This is an ethical issue of colonisation of nature through virtual capture and manipulation - I try to think childishly and innocently; we relate to warm-blooded, locomotive, animate creatures and can only perceive nature through these imaginary tour guides - it emphasises the desire to 'know by association' and the claim of an awareness of what surrounds us.