Series Title: data capture_DOUBLE TROUBLED
Date: 2013-
Artist’s name: Katherine Bull
Material: oil on board
Dimension: 240x180 x16mm (x 2 for each portrait)
Delegates from the NPSA (Neuropsychoanalysis) conference (22-25 August, Cape Town 2013) are invited to connect via Skype video chat for a one-hour portrait appointment. While they work on their computer, I keep them company and paint them while I watch them concentrate. The double portrait sketches are generated using my left and right hand simultaneously to create the two parallel portraits. I am interested in how the online platform enables an intimate ‘live’ connection with another, yet there is a temporal-spatial distance. In using the Skype interface as a space of silent communion, I draw attention to how we communicate on other levels not just direct engagement through speech and gesture. I am interested in using the online video chat platform formally due to the ‘painterly’ quality of the varying digital resolution of the connection and the ‘doubling’ that occurs within this interface. By doubling I mean that you are able to watch the person you are connecting with in a larger ‘window’ and yourself mirrored in a smaller ‘window’. Through creating an ambidextrous portrait I generate a further doubling and hope to explore the differences between my left/right brain perceptions.
THANK YOU TO : Beth Seelig, Maggie Zellner, Maribel Rodriguez Luna, Elizabeth Mckibben, Virginia Barry, Iftha Biran, Jaak Panksepp, Irith Raveh, Mark Solms, Justine Kupferman, Anna Krantz
