The conclusion of the research phase of this thesis led to the proposal of a cylindrical installation, filled with an animation translating the movement of elements in a JMW Turner painting into binary digits, designed to evoke the sublime through overwhelming the senses through large amounts of abstract data.
Since completing the research phase, I have rejected the input of a Turner painting and the methodology which formed the animation, whilst adjusting how I intend to use the space to evoke the sublime.
The aim of the previous methodology was to create a piece which remains original, relevant and reflective of my own relationship with the idea of the sublime and the idea of a digital sublime. A key factor in the translation of images in my previous theory was the resolving of the sublime into a format which can be represented and understood by the audience.
This undermines my own relationship with both digital technology and the natural sublime. While I have drawn many parallels between the digital and the natural worlds, from the size and expansion to the finite state of memory, I have somehow overlooked what is essentially the cornerstone of Kantian theory on the sublime, which holds true to both worlds, and this is that the sublime moment is a negative experience of limitations.
As Schopenhauer wrote in The World As Will & Representation (1818), ‘we feel ourselves reduced to nothing’ when contemplating the duration and enormity of the universe (205), leading the mind to the point which he regarded as the highest possible feeling of the sublime.
This interpretation of the sublime is not as a positive experience which can speak universally, but one of isolation, unique to the individual. There can be no generalizations, no relation to another person, which makes the experience so difficult to convey, one of reasons along with the limitation of a secondary format that the sublime has proved so elusive to explain, let alone express. To try and convey an experience, the only possibility is to as Noviselis put it ‘look inwards’. If a piece can speak personally it can hope to convey an element of truth.
I find the experience of the sublime daunting, isolating, and above all else, it reminds me of the indifference of the universe towards anything which I aim to or will achieve in life. It is a measure of time as minute and finite, and reduces the moment, despite its lofty feelings of importance, to something so minuscule, so insignificant that it is forgotten and is dead within a fraction of its arrival.
Although it is not strictly related, I feel I should point out at this point that I do not find the experience wholly depressing; although the sublime may well remind me of the absurdity of existence I do not see this a reason not to appreciate it; to borrow a much quoted expression allegedly from Gandhi “Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it anyway.”
Continuing on from this digression, the experience of the sublime as a reminder of the futility of the moment plays an equally valid role in the existence of the digital sublime, while on a less elevated level, as an invisible universe cannot have the hold of a physical reminder.
Even as I prepare this text which will eventually be published on an online blog, I am aware that this document will remain a coded CSS sequence on a server belonging to Google, to be visited a few times by a small handful of people (mostly my parents) before the page remains dormant until eventually it is either erased, lost in a server crash or completely forgotten, floating in a nonexistent purgatory with the millions of blog entries documenting people’s lives, likes or even occasionally pretentious pseudo-artistic ramblings relating to their masters courses. If a document is created but never accessed, it is as if the file doesn’t exist, with no physical copy it remains buried, never to be unearthed.
The internet and world wide web are in their infancy, and their evolution has been astronomical; by the time their lifetime has doubled, it is difficult to even speculate what format it will have taken. This means that files, like people, have a lifespan before they die and are forgotten. To relate back to the real world, a study conducted in 2007 by genealogy site ancestry.com found that 1 in 3 US users did not know any of the names of their great-grandparents (ancestry.com, 2007). If the personal is forgotten so easily, this would suggest that the digital is even more transient.
An example of personal digital data being lost is blogging site Greatest Journal, which closed in July 2009, meaning years of its users blog entries disappeared. A google search now brings up a handful of discussions about its closure; however it is now confined to the memory of its former users (google.com, 2011).
Related is the fear of a Digital dark age, in which files of old formats become obsolete and unreadable, meaning a large amount of data could become inaccessible. There are currently many high profile projects to prevent this happening, such as the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), creating a digital library of websites, videos and music, and since 2007 Microsoft have created a partnership with The National Archives to unlock now inaccessible formats (guardian.co.uk, 2007).
With my personal approach to the sublime assessed, the aims of my installation must now change. I hold much admiration for the abstract impressionists, as their paintings aimed to be experiential, rather than depicting the experience. This still holds true for my own installation, as the experiences I have described above are too abstract to convey as a tangible form or clumsy metaphor. However, the strength of artwork is its ability to provoke emotion. My negative experiences of being overwhelmed, exclusion, wonder, confusion, absurdity and perceived meaninglessness can still be held within an installation, however what will be key to the piece is how much is revealed and what is explained from the methodology. The universe may not reveal its secrets upon contemplation; however it still engages, which the installation must do. The worst possible response would be apathy. Therefore enough needs to be exposed to entice and connect to the viewer, but not so much that the ‘reveal’ is given away and the piece becomes completely understandable, as that would prevent any hope of provoking the sublime, which I would hope to evoke through the culmination of the above mentioned responses.
The use of a cylindrical installation remains valid, as the shape has no defined edges, no point of reference, and what projected onto becomes infinite and creates the illusion of endless space. It surrounds completely without resolve, and on a large scale removes any sense of claustrophobia which may be felt; important as large scale is significant if the viewer is to be overwhelmed. The cylinder makes the person confront the piece directly, rather then through the mediation of a television or cinema screen. The shape allows for the animation to cover the floor, walls, and the viewer, moving beyond the surrounding shape, actually engulfing them as part of the experience.
With the above brought into consideration, a method and reasoning behind the creation of the animation has been reconsidered.
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