Placeless Space
… The heightened flow of information through vast media networks has accelerated the creation of a world in which multiple media spaces can exist in any physical place and the same media space can exist in multiple physical spaces. The real and the virtual interpenetrate to such a degree that we have witnessed “a profound cultural shift, permanently altering the way we experience and represent space … marked by speed of mobility through space, the viewing of multiple perspectives simultaneously, … the breakdown of physical boundaries and temporalities.”(Anne Ellegood, “Out of Site: Fictional Architectural Spaces,” 2002, pp.7-11, An exhibition catalog) More and more we traverse a network of placeless spaces, or spaces that have no fixed geographical location. P.89
Responding to and representing the digitizing of information, contemporary artists may investigate places that are not tangible but exist only as virtual spaces. P.89
Cyberspace and other new realms of virtual reality have spawned new conceptions of structure, such as, liquid architecture, a term that refers to structures that mutate or expand into multiple, seemingly non-Euclidean dimensions. Another important arena of experimentation, for artists and scientific researchers alike, is immersion environments created by three-dimensional imaging technology. While some of these environments attempt to mimic the actual world, others present fantastic realms that are strictly computer generated. P.89
Constructing (and Deconstruction) Artificial Places
…, we will consider how artists are charting and challenging the false dichotomies that separate real from fictive places and nature from culture or exploring the intermingling of these realms. P.84
According to curators Jeffrey Deitch and Dan Friedman, all artistic representations of places, even natural landscapes, inevitably have conceptual overtones that are based on social constructs. “Even the generations of artists who strove to depict absolute truth in their renderings of nature tended to spiritualize it, romanticize, or intellectualize it.” P.84
One type of synthetic environment that has inspired a subset of artists is dioramas. These include both models, such as architectural models, model train displays, … The roots of contemporary artists’ dioramas go back to the creation of alternative worlds in the surrealist tradition.( i.e. Joseph Cornell) P.86
Curator Toby Kamps notes that most dioramas “present idealized, concentrated views” and that the simulations “engage our sense of depth perception and, with it, a bodily awareness of space, which encourages us to make the imaginative leap into their constructs.”(Toby Kamps, “Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art”, 2000, pp.07, An exhibition catalog) In their uncanny umount of detail dioramas are precursors of today’s virtual reality environments, but according to Ralph Rugoff, a diorama’s “antiquated virtual technology has long since ceased to dazzle us,” and thus views understand that a diorama is a metaphor. P.86
One way that artists engage with the constructed nature of place is to invent settings of their own. There is a long line of artists who depict their own invented dream scenarios and fantasy places… P.86
Contemporary artists have combined two- and three- dimensional approaches by building a tableau that they then paint or photograph (perhaps further manipulating the image on a computer). They ultimately destroy the model and display the photograph. American Sandy Skoglund and German Thomas Demand are two among the many who fabricate and then photograph constructed tableaux that are particularly evocative of a sense of place. P.87
In creating a simulated place, an artist is engaged in an unusual quest: to create an alternative world(or a detail of one) that evokes the real one and yet retains its identity as a world apart. Rather than representing or symbolizing an actual place, a simulation offers an intense substitute. Typically the viewer remains keenly conscious that the simulation is an artifice. Nevertheless, the skilled craftsmanship and involved conception that went into producing the simulation yield an uncanny effect: as viewers we feel ourselves transported into another realm brought magically to life within the borders of art. P. 87-88
Unlike the virtual-reality environments favored in video games, the fictional architectures and topographies created by visual artists do not necessarily aspire to hyperrealism. P.88
The exploration of invented environments can include those that exist only in the shared imaginations of the audience. While the set for a television show, for example, truly exists at a specific location (on a lot in Hollywood, perhaps), the environment it represents is somewhere else, a somewhere that may not be anywhere, really. P.88
- Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual art after 1980, Robertson and McDaniel