Jon Corbett
Pixels or Heavens (2022)
Pixels or Heavens (2022) is a reimagining of my previous work, Pixels from Heaven (2013). I am interested in the human relationship with nature and fabricated realities in both works. Between the natural world and the virtual/digital. In both works, there is a desire to seek out order and patterns in the randomly generated digital clouds. These psychological concepts, known as apophenia and pareidolia, were the motivating drivers behind the original Pixels from Heaven (2013).
However, in this updated work, Pixels or Heavens, I am expanding my imagery by drawing from Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1994). I challenge the viewer to contemplate the questions of reality and the fabrication of belief, just as we do with life and the afterlife.
Are these clouds a video simulacrum of real clouds imported to the system and manipulated? Or are they a simulation - created by the computer, never having existed in reality? I then complicate this vision by pixelating the moving image, pulling its realism closer to abstraction, and revealing its true digital nature before pushing it back to a more believable reality. Framed within a static semitransparent and obviously artificial cloud-shape cutout, these clouds and their movement are reinforced by this modern symbol of natural phenomena containing it all in a visual space of questionable existence.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan press, 1994.
3-minute single-channel video, no audio.
Jon Corbett