DO YOU SEE THE SKY FALLING?
Do You See The Sky Falling? is a series of photos and videos from an old digital camera laboring in the last moments of its life. The works were created from a place of anxiety, perceived in my surrounding or the general environment of things that has led me to feel and fear instability. It is as if something unknown and seismic had happened that has rippled through space and time. From what was once certain and true, now has become a murky deceit. It even seems like the sky itself has changed and is disintegrating in front of my eyes.
These works reflecting these feelings were created with an old point-and-shoot digital camera belonging to my mother. Although still able to create images and videos, its efforts result in disintegrating images. These distortions and disintegrations bring into focus the materiality of the digital image. Digital and the digital image has largely been taken for granted as something long-lasting, but like everything on this earth, it will face decay and death.
These works reflecting these feelings were created with an old point-and-shoot digital camera belonging to my mother. Although still able to create images and videos, its efforts result in disintegrating images. These distortions and disintegrations bring into focus the materiality of the digital image. Digital and the digital image has largely been taken for granted as something long-lasting, but like everything on this earth, it will face decay and death.
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the re-evaluation of all values
by Pathompong Manakitsomboon
When discussing the foundation of a new scientific media technology, Friedrich Kittler once suggested that any media technology would not see progress or develop into another better media without “the re-evaluation of all values.” This re-evaluation sees its emergence from handicaps and failures that could be understood under the name of glitch. It is artifacts of error that appear to negate the very notion of modernity grounded on perfection, completion and control, demonstrating the never complete control in any form of technology. In other words, the re-evaluation of all values takes into account for transposing a negative to a positive, the way in which a destructive malfunctioning of materials reveals the phenomenon's true character. And, if it could be said that photography and cinema inherently have the ability to store noise and glitch, then perhaps the real message they contain could be evaluated and reevaluated through the ambiguity of images and moving images.
In Do You See The Sky Falling?, Komtouch Napattaloong not only employs mechanical handicaps and failures to seek for ways in creating new artistic grammars, but also reevaluates certain values of his own memory and perspective toward the ambiguity of events in the society. This creates disturbance without damaging the main function the work occurs in, as to not prevent intermission, or glitch of the destructive malfunctioning. The glitch could still convey and contain messages, in the same way that the artist's camera is still in operation to perceive what is in front. In this regard, the handicapped image performs as a material event where subjectivity was inscribed on, however, it illustrates other subjects in the medium at the same time — the latency in our communication. This latent image operates by unfolding the hidden history and perception — the moment of truth — once concealed under the concrete narrative, and investigates complex layers of the society. Yet again, it is also searching for a link between two moments in time, the present and the past. Or what we could say that the best way to remember is always to recall. Do You See The Sky Falling? invites people living in the grand narrative to reevaluate all the thoughts that we once had.
by Pathompong Manakitsomboon
When discussing the foundation of a new scientific media technology, Friedrich Kittler once suggested that any media technology would not see progress or develop into another better media without “the re-evaluation of all values.” This re-evaluation sees its emergence from handicaps and failures that could be understood under the name of glitch. It is artifacts of error that appear to negate the very notion of modernity grounded on perfection, completion and control, demonstrating the never complete control in any form of technology. In other words, the re-evaluation of all values takes into account for transposing a negative to a positive, the way in which a destructive malfunctioning of materials reveals the phenomenon's true character. And, if it could be said that photography and cinema inherently have the ability to store noise and glitch, then perhaps the real message they contain could be evaluated and reevaluated through the ambiguity of images and moving images.
In Do You See The Sky Falling?, Komtouch Napattaloong not only employs mechanical handicaps and failures to seek for ways in creating new artistic grammars, but also reevaluates certain values of his own memory and perspective toward the ambiguity of events in the society. This creates disturbance without damaging the main function the work occurs in, as to not prevent intermission, or glitch of the destructive malfunctioning. The glitch could still convey and contain messages, in the same way that the artist's camera is still in operation to perceive what is in front. In this regard, the handicapped image performs as a material event where subjectivity was inscribed on, however, it illustrates other subjects in the medium at the same time — the latency in our communication. This latent image operates by unfolding the hidden history and perception — the moment of truth — once concealed under the concrete narrative, and investigates complex layers of the society. Yet again, it is also searching for a link between two moments in time, the present and the past. Or what we could say that the best way to remember is always to recall. Do You See The Sky Falling? invites people living in the grand narrative to reevaluate all the thoughts that we once had.
