The Ever present eye : a studio exploration of the moment and the everyday lived experience

摘要

The ever present eye is a studio exploration of the spectator and the effect of the transformingudmoment, when, in the ‘blink of an eye’, the everyday is interrupted by a transient experienceudof wonder or magical reflections upon the world, witnessed through a glance or discoveredudthrough the lens of the camera. The moment, as it is blinked into existence, is a complexudentity. It may be characterised as expansive and revelatory – a moment in which the temporaludand eternal conjoin, and it may also be a fragment capable of containing implicate fragments.udMy personal experience of a short-lived moment of wonder inspired intellectual curiosity andudexperimentation to both explain the event and to attempt to keep the extraordinary qualitiesudof the moment present.udAn attempt to engage with what has just passed and with the immediate drives this researchudproject, stimulated by Elaine Scarry’s idea that beauty incites the act of replication. Scarryudcites drawing, photography or language as primary tools of replication. Today the camera isudomnipresent, but no matter how quickly the iPhone, my ever present eye, is activated to replicateudthe moment the presentness of the moment is all but lost. The act of replication is also oneudof documentation, proof of existence, particularly of ephemeral actions that might pass unnoticedudin the landscape, or in the momentary performance of a work.udAliveness, created through engagement, is crucial to the extended life of ideas and to theirudoriginators. In this body of research I have collaborated with existing ideas and artworksudconflating theory with artist interviews and studio experimentation. I have used an array ofudcameras, including CCTV and the iPhone, in order to participate in a dialogue of generationaludaliveness where the act of replication can also become an act of creation reflecting on what hasudgone before and on the world around us.udJust as CCTV technology provided artists with a new means of exploring the world theudsmartphone has become the technology of the present moment. The smartphone is now soudever present that artists are creating works that demand the participation of the spectator. Theudreciprocal dialogue between the work of the artist and the spectator in the form of hundredsudof thousands of images that will then be disseminated across the world in an instant has neverudbefore existed. This project concludes that we are all changed by the omnipresence of thisudinstrument – empowered and endangered – in a way that Kodak could never have anticipatedudat the turn of the last century. The smartphone camera is now central to our restless search forudthe moment, meaning and knowledge of our everyday world.