Radial Theatre
Mechanism
Turntable / Wood / Aluminum Cylinder
Ø16 × 20 cm
2015
Mechanism
Turntable / Wood / Aluminum Cylinder
Ø16 × 20 cm
2015
It’s impossible to see not just three, but two walls, and even one wall of a house all at once. All at once we see only a minutely small fragment of the wall, and even that we don’t see all at once. All at once we see literally nothing. But not all at once we definitely receive an image of a house with three and four walls, as we conceive the house to be. A continuous pouring, overflowing, changing, struggle takes place in the living conception.1
A small scale mechanism constructed by converting the cartesian coordinates of a digital file depicting Domenikos “El Greco” Theotokópoulos’ The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586, into polar coordinates. The result was then digitally printed onto wood and the social strata bands used to compose characters in the original paintings used as (now) circular guidelines to cut circular rims — to each stratum its own rim. The anamorphosis resulting from the conversion from cartesian to polar coordinates is then undone by a polished aluminum cylinder placed at the print’s centre. Both print and cylinder are then played on a turntable, producing an infinite panning within the original painting. This exercise in time, perspective and coordinate systems was partially prompted by Florensky’s Reverse Perspective, 1920, — which dwells on the simultaneity of planes in El Greco’s work. More accurately, this assemblage draws on Florensky’s intuition — now confirmed by neuroscience — that images are visually constructed as successions (time), and his discontent towards a program of perspective unity — meaning, the notion of a pre-existing perspective system.
1 Florensky, P. (2006) Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art.
London: Reaction Books Ltd. ISBN 9781861893079. p.271.
A small scale mechanism constructed by converting the cartesian coordinates of a digital file depicting Domenikos “El Greco” Theotokópoulos’ The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586, into polar coordinates. The result was then digitally printed onto wood and the social strata bands used to compose characters in the original paintings used as (now) circular guidelines to cut circular rims — to each stratum its own rim. The anamorphosis resulting from the conversion from cartesian to polar coordinates is then undone by a polished aluminum cylinder placed at the print’s centre. Both print and cylinder are then played on a turntable, producing an infinite panning within the original painting. This exercise in time, perspective and coordinate systems was partially prompted by Florensky’s Reverse Perspective, 1920, — which dwells on the simultaneity of planes in El Greco’s work. More accurately, this assemblage draws on Florensky’s intuition — now confirmed by neuroscience — that images are visually constructed as successions (time), and his discontent towards a program of perspective unity — meaning, the notion of a pre-existing perspective system.
1 Florensky, P. (2006) Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art.
London: Reaction Books Ltd. ISBN 9781861893079. p.271.
