Artist Statement for Project 2

Still-life with Bottles, Photograph and Bananas

With the exception of the film footage of the moving water all the images used in this work were captured using a scanner.  This use of the scanner is intended to capture the items more as autonomous objects without including setting, and even minimizing the role of perspective.  This is also paralleled conceptually with the idea that a scanner can literally reproduce something in a digital form, a scan of a paper document is the document in a digital form, so it follows that a scan of the object is the object, only in a digital form.  The problem comes from the fact that essential qualities of the object are compromised in the digitization process, that is to say a photograph still fulfills the same role when scanned, however what is the role of for example a piece of food, if it cannot be eaten?  The work then denies all the practical and physical purposes of the object and only the symbolic remain.

 This work is intended to be read as a vanitas, this is alluded to in the title which names the work as a still-life despite the transitory nature of video.  This is just one of the conventions borrowed from the vanitas of Dutch still-life; others include the inclusion of over ripe fruit to symbolize decay and deterioration, as well as the use of chiaroscuro and having a collection of individual, symbolic objects.  The photograph is included to induce nostalgia and feelings of loss, and the money and bottles are included as a probable cause.  The film footage of the water is intended to make time apparent, and reinforce the feelings of futility against its invariability. 

Sound was not included in the work as it is intended to be an allusion to still-life painting portrayed using the conventions of video, the inclusion of sound would weaken this allusion as the work would be read exclusively as video.  This work is intended to be presented projected onto a conventionally prepared canvas.