“Horizon Line/ Line of Screen”

According to the modern thinking the sea was related to a contemplative moment and it was considered as the suitable scenario to experience the “sublime” of nature. That “immensity” of the ocean used to scare and appeal the subject at the same time, as it imposed a limit to his understanding.

Nowadays, technology has brought a destabilization in the way we experience the world and the relationships. Everything is mediated by the screen. In the essay “The Narrator”, Walter Benjamin tells the difference between the concepts of “information” and “narration”. In a similar way, we could distinguish between the concepts of “tourist” and “traveler/sailor”. So that, “sailing” that used to involve a travel, becomes a paradox in these days. We “surf” the network but we are still tourists in our own environment. We don’t travel anymore as we have seen everything before, from our place and trough the screen. Gradually, the world seems to become an image, which has neither location nor body.

“Horizon Line/ Line of Screen” establishes a new contemporary limit and a metaphor. Everything is closer and further and this new conception of distance constitutes our landscape.

"The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else"

Lisa Oppenheim
"The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else"

35mm slide projection using images downloaded from the internet of sunsets taken by soldiers in Iraq, then positioned in front of the setting sun in New York.

http://storegallery.co.uk/artists/Lisa%20Oppenheim/142/

Line of Horizon/ Line of Screen II

Another test on the horizon's research. Probably if the computer arrow appears it can make much more sense or, at least, the spectator can realize that the sea is an image on the screen.

Now we should try the movement of the arrow!

Line of Horizon/ Line of Screen

The horizon means "to limit" (in ancient greek) It's , apparently, the line that separates earth from sky, but as well, the line where they both meet. Indeed, by this idea, we locate ourselves in the world because this imaginary line involves a spherical Earth surface.

The sea can remind us of landscapes of the XVIII century (theory of sublime) but also the idea of sailing and therefore, the quote "surfing the network" related to the Internet.

Considering the border of a laptop as a line, we can establish a new relationship between physical and virtual world. On the Internet we feel free to go from one "place" to another, to talk to whoever at a distance, etc. However, we lose the reference of that there is "outside".

The work analyses the importance of looking at the contemporary times from a critical point of view, by assuming and understanding how technology changes our experiences.

Horizon

These are some tests of our work on the line of horizon. We still have too much left to do but I love the idea of connecting virtual and real worlds by using that "line"