Translated from the original article in Spanish published in
”El Ciudadano” [The Citizen], Monday, 28 November 2005, Buenos Aries, Argentina
Electronic Art -The desert enters the city
At Festival 404 Australian Mark Cypher presents his work “Biophilia” in which he interacts with the public and hybridizes relationships between subject and object.
Pablo Makovsky ”El Ciudadano” [ The Citizen]
We have always attributed to the insular character of the Japanese the imagery of their film s of the 60’s in which a monster emerged from the sea and laid waste to cities. Then in the 80’s the film s of Australians George Miller [Mad Max], Russell Mulcahy [Razorback], Peter Weir [Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave] offered the negative side of that thinking: In a continent where the major cities are on the edge of the sea the greatest terror com es from the centre of the territory, from that part of wild nature that Australians call desert, “outback”: a rural area in the everyday sense, but which in its harsh sound also evokes the arid backbone of a country only half understood. “We Australians fear nature”, says Mark Cypher , one of the artists invited to the 404 Festival of Electronic Art which from tomorrow until Friday is being held in Rosario in three places: “El Parque de Espa ñ a” [the Park of Spain], “El Patio de la Madera” [the Wooden Courtyard] and “El Museo de Arte Conte m por á neo” [The Museu m of Conte m porary Art].
The work that Cypher is presenting in the city is called “Biophilia” and consists basically of the transformation of the shadow of a person into the shadow of a hybrid. To stage his work the artist- a university teacher in Australia where he was born in1967-needs a volunteer, a digital camera, a projector and a CPU loaded with software designed by him which reinterprets the shadow of the person on the wall and projects it as a mutation between a man and a vegetable.
Mark Cypher is not unaware of the fact that when his parents- Australian offspring of North Americans who arrived in the country in the 30’s-called him “Mark” they were also branding him with a surname that arouses suspicions. “Is it real?” asks the reporter. Cypher laughs. He was expecting the question which is frequently asked, as the name conjures up in the curious the name of a science-fiction character called Lou Cypher [Lucifer] or one of the characters of the film Matrix. Cypher laughs and tells of how the Australian desert, the outback, is the place where the Aborigines live and of how the latter were ignored for many years by the new settlers. His generation went through school unaware of that history and with the same sentiments as their elders: English in Asia ! ; they were terrified of the shapeless images of thick bush on a desolate plain.
This is why his work conjures up shadows: those of the horror film , that of hybrid shapes, that of things which are some what ephemeral and mutating. An illustration of this can be found in the story “Strange Forces” in which one Leopoldo Lugones, a spiritualist, tells of the arrival of a visitor to the house of a man who harbours inside a violent ape which is revealed in his shadow; or the Story of Peter Schlemmilin which the hero sells his shadow to the devil; or that of Nosferato, in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s version of which the shadow of the claws of the vampire circle the head of the heroine. Cypher laughs, amongst other reasons because his Castilian is limited and because of the fact that being in a country with whose language he is unfamiliar makes him , a senior lecturer at Murdoch University, feel like a child. His Castilian is limited and the situation always seem s to him to be out of control in much the sa me way as happens with Australians and nature.
In the year 2000 Cypher presented his installation “Objectum ” based on the redesign of everyday objects. “The objects that surround us never fail to influence our senses” –the artist wrote at this ti m e. How we interact with everyday objects interests me. Whatever their makers’ initial intentions these decorative objects are expressed in a cultural sign language, which alludes to nature, masculinity, colonialism , history and suburbia with an unassuming honesty: you either love them or hate them . In the process of reconstruction of these objects “Objectum ” attempts to deconstruct the hidden meanings in these everyday objects and thus connect them with our lives”. In “Biophilia” Cypher combined his work in the 80’s (objects made of wood which called to mind plants of the Australian desert) with the discovery of the shadow as a prototype of the hybrid: “Nature-he says-is uncontrollable, it can be terrifying and the things it evokes can be symbolized in a shadow or a plant”.
In the 404 Festival the installation “Biophilia” will facilitate for the participants the interaction and generation of organic forms based on the distortion of their own shadows. The term alludes to the 1984 work of the sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, who postulated the need of living organisms to connect with others, even with those of different species. Contrary to the romantic vision of art, in which it is the artistic genius that transforms an object into a work, Cypher tries to create a “space in which people interact and work with him. In this case art is not only the transformation of an object but involves collaboration with a user”. What remains then of the contemplation of art? Cypher replies:
- It never remains static. When you use an object it is always changing. Basically my work deals with the relationship between individuals and objects so that contemplation, in my work, is always in action, it is a combination of several things that produce hybrid subjects and objects.
- Which accounts for your work with shadows?
- The thing is I am very interested in objects that are not objects and subjects that are not subjects, that is to say I am interested in situations in which subjects and objects hybridize. And the shadow is a good example of how a person can be reduced to an object. Someone’s shadow projected onto the wall becomes flat. An object has three dimensions, but its shadow only two, it is flat…..
- Remember the concept of the filmic image: something that is there like an imprint, like a sign of another thing.
- Exactly. Because a shadow is very ephemeral and the relationship that it establishes is ephemeral also….In the film, Nosferatu…
- Murnau’s expressionist version?
- Yes, there’s a marvellous scene where the heroine is on the point of being attacked by the vampire and you see the shadow of its hands circling her head. And the shadow conveys a kind of contradiction: it maintains contact with the object but lacks awareness and, symbolically, expresses things that we repress: emotions or whatever. In my culture the shadow has a corrupted quality…It’s a mixture of symbolism, of shapeless things, of elements of the horror film…
- Is there a discussion in Australia these days-in academic, artistic and intellectual circles-about the use of certain images and stories in the construction of the past?
- Yes. Though the historical narrative is very elusive. What is true, what is real? In Australia we often have in diverse and parallel ways discussions about the history of the colony. When I was at school I was never taught anything about Aborignal culture. Scholars of today m ust learn about that culture. New generations will re-write history. And, in m any ways, the historical narrative changes with the m ediu m that develops it: co m puters, m ulti m edia, interactive narratives even change the nature of truth, which no longer ste m s from the authority of the artists but from something that the spectators themselves can choose. Because history is always a history-and Cypher deconstructs the English term for history: “his story”, that is to say his account-. History is always the point of view of the winners…
This document has been translated by:
Elizabeth Penhale, NAATI Level 3 Translator
16 December 2005