MAYA VANDERSCHUIT

Pixelated Phenomena, 2015

digital video projection, 1 hr loop, plexiglass, mixed media

multi-media installation

Pixelated Phenomena, 2015, explores notions of the contemporary sublime in relation to the performative body. The human form, clothed in a green screen morph suit, explores California’s diverse natural landscapes. The color green has been keyed out and exchanged with a variety of iridescent surfaces.

In Iridescence, Intimacies, Tavi Meraud defines iridescence in terms of its “visual phenomenon,“ stating that “colors which change with the angle of incidence or viewing due to optical wave interference in the multilayer structure present at the wavelength of the scale underneath the surface.”

Pixelated Phenomena depicts iridescence as a constructed, fixed image. This “pixelated” iridescence illustrates an illusory synthesis of real space, digital space, and the hybridization of the two. The visual phenomenon is flattened and reduced to the surface.

Pixelated landscapes illuminate a dialogue between the real and the virtual. The ‘real’ becomes similar to Burke’s notion of the sublime, whereas the ‘virtual’ represents contemporary notions of the sublime.