VOLCANO

Lynne Marsh

21.04.06 – 21.05.06

Private View: Friday 21 April 6.00 – 8.00pm

"...any scientist who devotes himself to the study of Solariana has the indelible impression that he can discern fragments of an intelligent structure... It is not their nightmare appearance that makes the gigantic symmetriad formations dangerous, but the total instability and capriciousness of their structure..."
Stanislav Lem, Solaris 1961

Platform is pleased to present a new video installation Volcano, by Lynne Marsh.

Marsh’s Volcano and Lem’s Solaris explore landscape as material, metaphor, site and subject. Volcano, like Solaris presents a sensual encounter with a dislocated, shifting, virtual landscape. Marsh’s animation explores the attributes of surface, perspective and line of sight as codes for subjectivity in the space of the moving image. The point of view hovers above a sublime spatial field, the landscape ripples and swirls at ever increasing speed resulting in a disintegration of the projected image, and at the same time disorienting the viewer.

Volcano consists of a (curved) single-screen looped projection with sound. Initially, we are situated at the foothills looking up at the simulated mountain/volcano off in the distance. This point of view can be compared to the historical landscape painting of German artist Casper David Friedrich who used traditional landscape to describe his romantic vision of the beyond. The figures in Friedrich paintings standing in awed contemplation of the limitless expanse of nature; are replaced in Volcano by the viewer in front of the projected image.

Volcano continues the artist’s investigation into digitally simulated environments as material, metaphor and site using landscape-in-motion as a performative space. It is the second of two works based on a 3D simulation of the crater of Mount St. Helens, an active volcano near Seattle, Washington. This simulation of the volcano originated with NASA scientists, who used a “Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner” to create a pictorial equivalent of the landmass’ varying temperatures and densities. Marsh has taken this imagery and further manipulated it, subjecting it to a range of interventions for aesthetic and ideological purposes. The resulting animation represents a dislocated sense of visuality that emerges from an intersection of scientific visualization with science fiction and special effect in which speculative ‘worlds’ have, to some extent, become legitimated as a form. Marsh has said “Volcanos, often inaccessible to humans represent a spatial overabundance subsequently becoming much more valuable as terrains for the imagination and for a possible performative acting out. The practice of translating a volcano into a virtual model and from this to an immersive screen-based installation is essentially one of controlling and contriving the landscape into an artificial kingdom with the viewers presence completing the process of exploration and colonization.”

Lynne Marsh is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice merges digital video, 3D animation, performance and sound. Since 1993, Marsh has been producing work that addresses representation mediated through technology and simulation. She is particularly interested the convergence of speculative fiction; fashion; and the political, social and imaginary stakes of territorial exploration. Marsh’s installations have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the USA, the UK and Europe.