Scan Scroll Surf

One of the specific qualities of digital images lies in the way in which they relate to other images. It is neither the taking over of other material, nor the copying or simply referencing it that is crucial here but, rather, the mechanical transformations that take place in the process. Borrowing the notion from music, it could be called ‘versioning’. Oliver Laric ties the concept to the images that are analysed in his episodic film, Versions. What is revealed here is a continuous branching of the visual material he uses, a characteristic further facilitated by digitalization. In 5 Laric has five computer generated figures enter into a combinatory dating game in which the same sentence formulations are repeated. This unfolds a flexible weaving of meanings with network-like traits which give emphasis to other works in this program that explore very differing visual fields. Frances Stark animates a cybersex chat in what appears to be a blithely naïve manner but penetrates into surprising territory in the process. Timo Arnall questions what happens when seeing is increasingly delegated to machines and James Richards searches for elements in common that are hidden behind heterogeneous pictorial sources and film formats.

Film Program

Oliver Laric, Versions, 2009, 7 min

James Richards, The Misty Suite, 2009, 7 min

Oliver Laric, Versions, 2010, 9 min

Timo Arnall, Robot Readable World, 2012, 5 min

Frances Stark, My Best Thing, Episode 1+2, 2011, 19 min

Oliver Laric, 5, 2013, 10 min

Melanie Gilligan, 4 x exchange / abstraction: section 1, 2013, 3 min

Oliver Laric, Versions, 2012, 6 min

Followed by a discussion between Oliver Laric and Christian Höller.

Oliver Laric lives in Berlin. Exhibitions (selection): Black Box: Oliver Laric, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2014); Oliver Laric: Lincoln 3D Scans, The Collection and Usher Gallery, Lincoln, GB (2014); Be Water My Friend, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2012).

Christian Höller lives in Vienna. He is author, curator and co-editor of the magazine springerin.