10 Questions with Joanna Wlaszyn

Joanna Wlaszyn is a Polish-French interdisciplinary artist, teacher, and researcher based in Paris. Her work fuses visual language with conceptual experiments. She attempts to create alternative interpretations in response to a constantly evolving post-digital culture. Rather than distorting reality, she challenges modes of perception and representation, through video, installations, digital art, and hybrid drawings and paintings.

Artist, designer, and interdisciplinary researcher from the architectural world, who explores various possible interpretations of reality resulting from current technological phenomena. Joanna Wlaszyn studied architecture, art, and design in new media and holds a doctorate in architectural theory and criticism from the University of Paris-Est as well as a Specialized Master in Creation in New Media from Ensci in Paris. She is also the author of several scientific publications on the multifaceted impact of recent technological advances on the disciplines of art, design, and architecture. Born in Poland, she lives and works in Paris.

www.intransitivity.net | @joanna.wlaszyn

Data Clouds | PROJECT DESCRIPTION

DATA CLOUDS refers to the (in)visibilities of digital data that travel driven by the wind of the networks to unknown destinations according to time zones. Translated here into illusory correlations, these "clouds" reveal pareidolia composed not of water particles but fragments of lives, coded in digital clouds and stored in 45 million centers all around the world.

Video is created through cross-digital techniques and can be projected on HD flat screens and/or on a large wall to create another aesthetic experience. The stereo sound is important in this work because it gives another dimension to the passing clouds. Regardless of the rhythm difference between the two, the superposition of the incomprehensible voices creates surprise and appears and disappears at times as an echo.

This piece is ten minutes long and runs in a loop without accentuating its beginning or the end. Variables dimensions for the installation depend on projection support and change the perception of the work. If the projection takes place in the closed big room, the immersion is immediate, the dominant blue color of the video and the stereo sound absorb the visitors. This presentation of DATA CLOUDS allows us to experience this work for many visitors at the same time. Another possibility is to project the video on the HD flat screen and listen to the sound with helmets — this presentation is more intimate. It allows only two visitors to appreciate the video simultaneously.

DATA CLOUDS, Video installation, 2018-2020 © Joanna Wlaszyn

INTERVIEW

You have an interesting background, coming from architecture and new media. At the same time, you are the author of several scientific publications. How did you start getting involved with art?

My scientific publications explore the impact of digital technologies on architecture and visual arts. This theoretical interest came during my doctoral research about the reception of architecture and recent technologies. Far from supposed subjectivity, that analysis has been guided by the notion of perceptual experience based on aesthetic and phenomenological concepts. I was interested in this double reflexivity that relates to the study of conceptual and "concrete" in speculative tensions between the "digital" and physical worlds. My research has investigated architecture as increasingly related to the artistic field. Analyzing the aesthetic factors of various concepts and case studies, I apprehended the cognitive aspect and the aesthetic value of "technological reception." I introduced a new notion as an operational tool, making it possible to address sensitive, hybrid and variable aspects of architecture and artistic experimentation. I started to represent this questioning through my artistic research with BEAUTY DISTORTION MIRROR, a project presented in 2015 at Biennale Internationale Saint-Étienne in France. Visualized as a three-dimensional topology, this 3D-printed mirror deforms the reflection of each person who looks at it. If the traditional mirror function is to reflect, Beauty Distortion Mirror fully encompasses the viewer by its three-dimensionality in a new sensory experience. The person in front of the mirror becomes aware of reality through the projection of its deformed image. The multiple reflections of the viewer become a broadcaster of sensitive surfaces causing incessant animation to create an ephemeral dialogue with space, time, and the senses of the spectator. Beauty Distortion Mirror was created with generative software and 3D printed to become a conceptual object that queries the individual multi-sensory perception.

This is how I started getting involved with art, and since 2015 I have been attempting to create my alternative artistic interpretations in response to a constantly evolving post-digital culture. Rather than distorting reality, I prefer to challenge the actual modes of perception and representation through video, installations, digital art, and hybrid drawings and paintings.

How would you describe your development as an artist and the way you have transitioned towards your expression?

Art is, for me, a transitive reflection of the reality that oscillates in-between illusion and the multidimensional relevance of perception. I'm working on the potentiality of the real by creating its possible interpretations. My visual explorations contain figures that are not construed voluntarily but offer representations, with universal narratives accessible to all. In my work, I intentionally meld the visual language and conceptual experiment into alternative representations. Through an interdisciplinary approach, my artworks propose to rethink digital as new forms of aesthetics. By merging different traditional and digital technics, I explore various phenomena of reality nowadays, such as the ubiquity of digital identities, their limits, presence, and visual simulation. Based on the fragility of the gaze that often characterizes our current view of the world, my inspirations come from cultural dualities present in our lives and constantly amplified by evolving technological progress and their impacts on our malleable realities.

In one of my projects F@CELESS, I have investigated the concept of malleable realities. F@celess are hunted identities existing only in digital environments: e-spaces. Created through digital transformation, these vanishing f@ces evoke a phenomenon of alienation in nowadays reality. Today's world is embodied in virtuality and allows us to hide behind virtual masks and to camouflage real identities. Visible only in the universe of digital interfaces, F@celess live anonymously in e-spaces, hiding from a hyper-visibility and disappearing immediately when someone attempts to approach them too closely. Using the augmented reality layer, it is possible to discover the identities of vanishing f@ces well hidden in the portraits, but the question will still remain: who are they? This kind of work reflects the concept and cultural phenomenon of New Aesthetics, launched in 2011 by the artist and writer James Bridle. Since it has been used to refer to the increasing appearance of digital technologies related to visual language in the physical world. New Aesthetics reflect both the post-digital nature of creativity in our age and the critical perspectives of blending boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds.

Your work is a reflection on communication and data transmission. What is the main aim of your project, "Data Clouds"?

DATA CLOUDS refer to the (in)visibilities of digital data that, according to time zones, are traveling driven by the wind of networks to unknown destinations. Translated here into illusory correlations, these "clouds" reveal pareidolia composed not of water particles but fragments of lives, coded in digital clouds and stored in 45 million centers all around the world. This video installation is created through cross-digital technics and can be projected on HD flat screens or on a large wall to create another aesthetic experience. The stereo sound is important in this work because it gives another dimension to the passing clouds. Regardless of the rhythm difference between both of them, the superposition of the incomprehensible voices creates an effect of surprise and appears and disappears at times as an echo. This project refers to our data privacy, it's (in)secure protection and transmission.

How important is virtuality and the digital world for your work? And what do you find so fascinating about it?

Virtuality has always been present in our lives, as coexistence. This concept was well described by the philosophers Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. For Deleuze, virtualization is the passage of current to the virtual and refers to an ideal aspect of reality, but nonetheless real. Both Bergson and Deleuze build their virtual concepts about a quotation of Marcel Proust that defines virtuality as "real but not actual, ideal but not abstract." Virtual is a kind of potentiality that becomes fulfilled in the actual, it is still not material, but it is real. This is how I understand virtuality, and effectively, I find it fascinating especially amplified by the digital world. Today, we have technologies that allow us to capture these different states of virtuality and show the invisible side of what is real. I am thinking about representing this phenomenon in the virtual extension of my HIGH DEFINITION BLUR series. I want to create a virtual experience based on incomplete, and sometimes unreal dreams represented randomly. Although this virtual dream-walk will be individual and not predefined, it always becomes a sensitive and subjective story.

On the other hand, the viewers seem to be very important for your project, "Data Clouds," as they activate the work through their fruition. How do you engage the viewers in your artworks?

DATA CLOUDS is a ten-minute-long video installation and runs in a loop without accentuating its beginning or the end. Variable dimensions for the installation depend on projection support and change the perception of the work according to the projection space. If the projection takes place in a big closed room, the immersion is immediate. The dominant blue color of the video and the stereo sound absorb the visitors. This presentation of DATA CLOUDS allows experiencing this work for many visitors at the same time. Another possibility is to project the video on an HD flat screen and to listen to the sound with headsets — this presentation is more intimate. It allows only two visitors to appreciate the video at the same time. These different possibilities of representation accentuate the subjectivity of aesthetic experience.

What do you hope that the public takes away from your work?

I was told once that my work is troubling. I truly prefer to hear this kind of reflection, than what I am doing is beautiful. I like to think the public receives my work as a part of a cultural value and intellectual production, coordinated by technological means which amplify it. As I work with digital tools, it introduces a new kind of aesthetics, it can be seen as inquiring, but in any case, I hope the public finds it singular. The reception of art is a subjective, emotional, and aesthetic experience. I hope once seen, the public will remember my work and grabs its conceptual aspect and its hidden sensitivity.

How much new technologies influence your artistic practice? And how do you keep up with the latest digital trends and technologies?

For me, technologies are a conceptual tool of reflection and a practical way of realization. Usually, I have a conceptual idea that is revealed through visual research using cross-digitals technics. The theoretical concepts are often indirectly involved in my creative process. I believe the meaning of my work is to emphasize how easy reality can become today, the illusionary world filled with fake ideas, information peoples. I explore areas, which reflect both the post-digital nature of creativity in our age and the critical perspectives of blending boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds. It is also important for me to reconsider the cultural, social, and ethical implications of new technological tools for manipulating reality and facts conceptually. I interpret the meaning of my work as infinite research of sensibilities, emotion, and matter behind the simple visual effects using digital as a tool. By using cross digital technics, I create a unique approach guided by my artistic intuition and no by digital trends. However, I also closely follow the never-ending technological progress and all kinds of phenomena related to it. Some of the latest technologies like artificial intelligence are fascinating; I think of integrating them into my future artistic experimentations.

On the same topic, NFTs seem to be the latest trend, and everyone is talking about it. What are your thoughts on this subject? Are NFTs here to stay or just a temporary trend?

As many others have noticed, NFTs seems to be a new possibility for many digital artists to tokenize their creativity. All crypto platforms reflect a multitude of digital approaches and make the question of aesthetics even more problematic. So what makes good crypto art? Endless digital variety should not be confused with cultural vitality; privileging artistic originality is no longer adequate when evaluating art today. Likewise, it will contribute to new media artists, game engine designers, and their kind ok new aesthetics will shape new ethics of art's production. It is yet difficult to predict the future of NFTs, there are so many artistic and pseudo-artistic works that are biding right, but many others are drowning in the crowd. Like in any blockchain, there is an environmental footprint issue, particularly related to the energy demand. Some platforms pretend to be more environmentally friendly than others, like hicetnunc.xyz. Eventually, more and more galleries are interested in NFTs, so I believe it is much more than a temporary trend, and NFTs are here to stay but not in the current configuration. I'm still waiting to get into the NFTs crypto market and at the same time to preserve my artistic legitimacy.

As a digital artist yourself, what are your thoughts on digital presentations, like fairs and exhibitions, for artists? Do you think these are good opportunities, or do you wish to go back to life as it was before the pandemic?

I believe we will never be able to come back to our lives before the pandemic to forget what happened and continue like before. This global condition changed our perception of the world forever, digital became a part of our life, and this will not change. The digital art market is surely one of the less impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. Most of the paintings are sold on the internet, and a few galleries are still open by reservation. Gradually, digital art begins to replace physical art, like NFTs art market, for example. What the pandemic achieved was a total flattening of all forms of artistic display across online platforms. On the one hand, these merging economies revealed the lie of contemporary art's separateness from the wider culture.

On the other hand, it catalyzed the growth of virtual marketplaces in which a new wave of digital art could leverage the blockchain for verifiable digital scarcity. But even if I saw some very good online exhibitions and art fairs, nothing can replace physical contact or face-to-face discussion. However, the digital world will remain an additional opportunity to connect with collectors and art lovers. If all would become digital, we could get lost easily, overwritten by the number of virtual images, information, and online exhibitions. I think the solution will be a well-defined coexistence of the digital and physical art worlds.

What projects or exhibitions are you most looking forward to in the near future? Anything exciting coming soon?

Currently, I am working on a new series called CORPUS MEUM. It is a series of paintings in which I am exploring the visible and invisible perception of corporeality. This work is about awareness of the body, passing time, and changes. Using both digital techniques and traditional painting, I want to allow the viewers to project themselves into the painting, to become part of it through reflection, like in the mirror. I am looking to create a new dimension in-between abstraction and figuration of the digital and analog worlds. This new work unveils a different perspective of the female bodily experience that can be seen as digital distortions that explore contemporary physical conditions. I hope to show this new work soon, as soon as the pandemic allows the galleries to reopen. I am looking forward to this!

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