The subtitle sets the stage for this intriguing
webbased work by Claudia Probst and Michael Shpaizman: Digital Mutations
presents you with a somewhat bizarre collection of 16 virtual relatives
that await your visit in the neatly organized "cabinet" section of the
site.
Your new and virtual "relatives" are mostly
Photoshop constructions assembled from what appear to be early 20th century
family portraits and a good dose of digital imaging filters.
The result is an amazing multi-media collision of images fleetingly
reminiscent of Diane Arbus or your grandmother's family album.
Oscillating between possibility and obvious
forgery, the images "invites us to question the truth of human identity,"
as the artists point out in their introduction to the work, and the issue
of personal identity and history is certainly part of the subtext of this
work.
The work's strength, however, seems to
arise primarily from the sophisticated assemblage of stylistically diverse
modes of representation. Probst and Shpaizman's images display a
constant shift between the familiar poses typical of family portraits taken
in the early 1900's, psychedelic flourescence of the 1960's, and fractal
surface textures of the 1990's.
An entertaining and visually pleasing site,
Digital Mutations is definitely worth a visit.
The site is located at:
http://www.digitalmutations.de/
san francisco, august 2000
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