Picture this.
The image, the body.
The Dimensions of reproduction.
Anchor points. Two rooms, similarly equipped to accommodate the processes by means of which obsessions are transported toward their fulfillment in form, in content, in formed content, in contented form. Two rooms, or homes, sites, or provisional places. Maybe the halves of an unresolved equation, each the other's dark reflection. Simple elements whose simplicity belies a staggering complexity, the complexity of becoming, the complexity of what is beyond or connected to.
Computer screen, window, television screen, simply these. An architecture that is elaborated in the spaces between them. A geography of crossing points, of penetrations, of inversions and possible reversals. The things we need to think about are scattered within the bounds of this triangle, but not on its apparent surface. The triangulated space has more dimensions, and time snakes through it, connecting and reconnecting the points so that its geometry is extruded and warped through the changing states and modalities of its unfolding narrative. Combining, recombining, recombining again. No firm basis other than the presence, or inference, or likelihood of oneself, but even this a provisional arrangement - no certainties, only the constant repetition, refinement, modification and recombination of those elements from which the whole has been composed until now. Somehow the status is clear, but then again, not. We must simply continue and watch out for signs that things are finding their level, that the parts elaborate a dialogue and that the dialogue is constructed in terms that can be comprehended. Too much to ask ? Yes, certainly, always - but asking too much is the basis of inquiry, and the search for the unanswered can not be called off.
It is a question of survival - some form of survival. Elements that can be repeated, so that the fundamental structure can be shifted, relocated, set up in another place. The necessary elements, the anchor points, a system or home, or way of being. A diagram or map or picture. Picture it, picture this.
And then, Re-Picture This
Again, three points of reference, three surfaces, screens or light emiting/transmitting/transforming surfaces, reproduced, recontextualised, subtitled and hypertexted as a trap or prison or citadel within whose energy field whatever it is going to become, will be played-out. Played out, re-enacted and re-combined from elements already used and re-used and re-used again, but modified and modulated, fine tuned to the shifting requirements of a situation-as-is, unfolding/enfolding, a fractalised problem of description or definition. As the light level of one frame decreases, so the reflected energy of the others is intensified and the replication, multiplication, reproduction is pushed to another level. Server s push and clients pull - in a binary process. The pushing and the pulling are twins, or clones, but unstable, mutable, morphologous. Maybe they are sprites, or floating signs. Maybe they are the value-defining units of a screenal economy. But finally, accept, this is what they are: images, reproductions, replications. And they set the terms by which you will negotiate your tenure in this space. Picture it, picture yourself, framed this way, or projected on to some kind of screen. Picture this.
© Jeremy Welsh 1996. This text may be downloaded and printed for personal use, but may not be reproduced in any form without the author's written permission.