From One Shot 相簿
75 張照片
This album owes its existence to a series of discussions with Jean-Louis Mazieres about what the word "abstract" means (and hides) in visual art. I dedicate this album to him in gratitude for his patient and gentle explanations to a virtual novice.
All pictures in this album are taken from a single photograph. Just for the fun of it....
So the set-up for this album - really, an experiment of sorts - is very simple: Take a run-of-the-mill image and then change all or parts of it with a simple photoprogram. I have used a version of Ulead Photoimpact from the last years of the last millennium.
Clearly, the original photograph is closest to reality (if there indeed exists a presence definable as "reality").
The more the digital file suffers algorithmic change, the farther from "reality" the image will be. And the farther we shall move from concrete to abstract, from figurative to non-figurative, from observational to conceptual, from Homo sapiens to Homo ludens, from classical to contemporary art. Or so we think.
My interest was not the picture per se nor what its variations show. My interest was the perception and reaction of the human brain, the "resonance of the soul" [if there is such a thing as a soul].
My interest - particularly in relation to the "Abstract Art" or "Conceptual Art" shown in our State-run Museums of "Contemporary Art" - was also what this little play on forms and colors, on selection and treatment, would show about human psychology, reactions and societal behavior at the beginning of the Third Millennium.
This could have become an interminable project - which it seems to be in our Museums of Contemporary Art - but there is only so far that even an avowed and (Flickr-Icon-) certified jester can count on the patience of his viewers.
So I decided to stop at 66 images. This isn't quite the "Number of the Beast", but it comes close.
My apologies for playing the Homo ludens and my gratitude for your patience and indulgence!
