Archive of Digital Art features Uršula Berlot with 36 Artworks + Interview
Exploring hidden topographies and autopoietic imagery https://www.digitalartarchive.at/features/featured-artists/featured-artist-ursula-berlot.html Uršula Berlot invites us to immerse ourselves into the world beneath our perception. As a philosopher, researcher and artist, she questions scientific imagery such as simulations of life at the molecular level and mathematical models in a poetic way. Microscopic and nano-scientific images become digital animations in black and white that allow us to freely experience this visual world, often in an expressive or dreamlike quality. Her works deal with modellings of physicality, microbiology, and radiology as well as light, simulacrum and magnetism. https://www.digitalartarchive.at/database/artists/general/artist/berlot.html Berlot has exhibited her work at festivals, museums and research centres around the world, e.g. Today Art Museum, Beijing, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. She has collaborated with the Jožef Stefan Institute and the Clinical Institute of Radiology, University Medical Centre in Ljubljana. For her digital animations, she also works with designer Sunčana Kuljiš and with sound artists like Robin Rimbaud and Alessandro Tedeschi. Since 2009, she has worked as lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana and has become Associate Professor in 2014. A Closer Gaze at Microscopic Level Scientific principles and reciprocal, proportional or relative processes direct the composition and movements in her images. Viewers can immerse themselves in this rhythmic and expressive animation. In “Bodygaze” (2020) graphical images combine structures that look like microscopic imagery and the morphology of bodily particles. The bodily tissue is mediated in a variety of observation ratios: from stylised visible body parts (abstracted forms of hair, eyelashes and skin structures) to microscopic images of elementary bodily particles. There is a similarity to early film theory and Jean Epstein’s concept of photo-genie. While Epstein and his colleagues were fascinated by elevating everyday objects through filmic styles, Berlot gazes deeply into scientific imagery and its simulation of life. Her animations go beyond a close-up and represent reality through scientific analysis and visualisation. In the end, our perception of reality is juxtaposed with the visibility of the hidden world beneath and beyond it. Then and now, visual technologies allow us to take a closer gaze and Berlot investigates this within arts-based research. Ursula Berlot’s artworks deviate from knowledge recognition towards an aesthetic exploration. To do this, she remixes, remediates and digitally processes the initial sources of inspiration. Algorithmically coded images reference the duality of mimesis and technologically generated reality. They question today’s boundary between image/simulation and original. In ”Cerebral landscapes (Reflections)” (2006) a kinetic light installation visualises pulsating pre-cerebral states, mental-sensory patterns and mental energies. Berlot understands this work also as an artistic metaphor of dichotomy: reflection as the optic phenomenon of light reflection or a mental activity – a concentrated process of thinking. Her work can also be highly personal since Berlot often uses her own body particles to create these images and animations. In the history of the body in art, her interpretation is poetic and technical at the same time: It is a self-portrait, a way of inscribing oneself into the work and an experiment. By working on a microscopic level, Berlot takes a new look at artistic identity and creation. The work ”Bodyfraction” (2020) parallels microscopic images of fragments of the artist’s body with recordings of drawings and light-sensitive objects created on their basis. QUOTES Martin KEMP: Uršula Berlot is beautifully exploring a very specific world of morphologies and processes at invisible scales. Not only does she find thrilling variety in this literal microcosm but she also infers fascinating analogies with what we see at the macro-scale. She is technically accomplished to a high degree and manages to achieve a compelling level of lyricism. Ingeborg FÜLEPP: The specificity of Berlot's engagement with media and digital technology lies in her very experimental approach toward its expressive capacities. Instead of using media technology as a means in itself her creative process is directed to explore the variety of states of subjective perception. Her light installation at Media-Scape (Museo Lapidarium, Novigrad, 2008) was wonderfully fitting the idea of bridging the historical remains with the modern times. Tomislav VIGNJEVIĆ: One of the basic premises of Uršula Berlot's artistic expression is undoubtedly her desire to enlarge and ensuing practice of making visible that which is not before our eyes, that which is not directly evident nor exposed to the view and analysis of the viewer other than through her work. Nataša PETREŠIN BACHELEZ: In her art works, Uršula Berlot is observing the influences of so called coincidences and the results that uncontrolled processes cause. Her own "confronting the unknown" in the form of creative openness to the characteristics of the used materials (artificial resin and plexi glass) and to the gravity laws has brought her to an abstract visual language. She is complementing it with the scientific terminology and analogies, drawn from the processes occurring in the nature. ARTISTS AND SCHOLARS CAN BECOME MEMBERS ON THE ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (ADA) ARTISTS and SCHOLARS are invited to become members of the online community and set up their ADA profile. To ensure a high academic standard, five published articles and/or exhibitions are required to become members of the ADA community. Create your account here: www.digitalartarchive.at/support/account-request.html SHARE YOUR RESEARCH WITH PEERS AND THE COMMUNITY Community members can upload publications and PDFs, announce upcoming events, post comments, document exhibitions, conferences and other relevant news. ADA: THOUSANDS OF ARTWORKS Since its foundation in 1999, the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (former Database of Virtual Art) has grown to be the most important online archive for digital art. In cooperation with established media artists, researchers and institutions it has been documenting the rapidly evolving world of digital art and its related fields for more than a decade and contains today a selection of thousands of artworks at the intersection of art, science and technology. ARTISTS and SCHOLARS are invited to join the community and set up their own archive pages. ARTISTS represented, among many others: Rebecca ALLEN, Suzanne ANKER, Cory ARCANGEL, Roy ASCOTT, Louis BEC, Maurice BENAYOUN, Paolo CIRIO, Charlotte DAVIES, FLEISCHMANN & STRAUSS, Masaki FUJIHATA, Ken GOLDBERG, Agnes HEGEDÜS, Lynn HERSHMAN LEESON, Ryoji IKEDA, Eduardo KAC, Ken RINALDO, KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH, Lev MANOVICH, George LEGRADY, Golan LEVIN, Rafael LOZANO-HEMMER, Joseph NECHVATAL, Michael NAIMARK, David ROKEBY, Jeffrey SHAW, Julius v. BISMARCK, Paul SERMON, Karl SIMS, SOMMERER & MIGNONNEAU, STANZA, Nicole STENGER, THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD, Peter WEIBEL, et al. Advisory board: Christiane PAUL, Roy ASCOTT, Erkki HUHTAMO, Gunalan NADARAJAN, et. al. EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION FOR THE NEEDS OF DIGITAL ART Due to the processual, ephemeral, interactive, technology-based and fundamentally context-dependent character of digital art, it is at risk for becoming extinct without an adequate documentation. Therefore, the ADA is based on an expanded concept of documentation, which takes account of the specific conditions of digital art. ADA TEAM: Oliver GRAU Nicole HIGH-STESKAL, Janina HOTH, Wendy COONES, Ann-Christin RENN, Viola RÜHSE, (Editorial Team) digitalart.edi...@donau-uni.ac.at -- rohrpost - deutschsprachige Liste zur Kultur digitaler Medien und Netze Archiv: http://www.nettime.org/rohrpost http://post.in-mind.de/pipermail/rohrpost/ Ent/Subskribieren: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rohrpost/