The video animation is part of a piece called The Eye (2017) an assemblage made from the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (part 1&2), a magnifying glass and a small two inch monitor. The weighty dictionary, protected by a slipcase, has seen better days. In the past a book with such impressive binding and the guilded letters must have radiated a kind of fresh and knowledgable authority, a time when separation, close scrutiny and analysis prevailed.
Underneath the slipcase is a small compartment usually reserved for a magnifying glass. The screen is nesting inside that little drawer which is open, and it reveals the black and white video stop-frame animation. The piece and the animation was inspired by Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics. He speaks about the parallels between physics and eastern mysticism, oneness and the interconnectedness of all life.
Like Eastern mysticism, quantum physics discovered a different kind of knowledge, which is not an edifice but an organism in process of evolution. Indeed any phenomena is a process and only ever temporarily static.
Stop frame animation seemed like the perfect medium to explore this idea. After all we are looking at a sequence of static images unfolding in quick succession. We perceive movement.
The magnifying glass emphasises the role of the observer. It is a participatory universe after all.