Post by Omar Rizwan (@omar@social.omar.website)

Omar Rizwan @omar

"how do you represent phenomena that cannot be measured by the human eye?" (https://www.frieze.com/article/claire-lehmann-lucy-ives-interview-2021) https://social.omar.website/@omar/statuses/01GSSDXRFXWKTSDD359MYQW7AG

LI: You also take the side effects of contemporary image-producing technologies and make us look straight at them. CL: Yes! The touchstone for Model for Normals [2020], for example, is a file from an imaging experiment where scientists measure vectors of light bouncing off various surfaces, which are then used to calculate reflectance in CGI engines. This visualisation fulfils a purely bureaucratic need, but I’m offering a glimpse of this hidden process. These by-products from the contemporary imaging industry are, for me, also redolent of some of the same issues that presented themselves in painting centuries prior: how do you represent phenomena that cannot be measured by the human eye? I think, for example, of how a divine visitation could only be gestured at through beaming vectors of gold leaf. LI: Speaking of the unrepresentable, the last time I was looking at your work I noticed that medical technology plays a certain role. I hadn’t previously thought about how much imaging goes into contemporary medicine.

LI: You also take the side effects of contemporary image-producing technologies and make us look straight at them. CL: Yes! The touchstone for Model for Normals [2020], for example, is a file from an imaging experiment where scientists measure vectors of light bouncing off various surfaces, which are then used to calculate reflectance in CGI engines. This visualisation fulfils a purely bureaucratic need, but I’m offering a glimpse of this hidden process. These by-products from the contemporary imaging industry are, for me, also redolent of some of the same issues that presented themselves in painting centuries prior: how do you represent phenomena that cannot be measured by the human eye? I think, for example, of how a divine visitation could only be gestured at through beaming vectors of gold leaf. LI: Speaking of the unrepresentable, the last time I was looking at your work I noticed that medical technology plays a certain role. I hadn’t previously thought about how much imaging goes into contemporary medicine.