Overview
The artistic work of Oceanic Horror comprises two groups of works. The first revolving around the trading offices named ‘Island’ in the advent of the internet and electronic trading, and the second revolving around its natural successor, the trading firm ‘Archipelago’, that continued the digitalising trading trend into the web 2.0 era and the splash of online existence. The former group of works was produced midways through this research project and for this reason enabled a close and extensive correlation between production and reflection. The latter group of works was produced fairly close to the finalisation of this research project, hence having a shorter timeframe for in-depth reflection. This said the two groups of artistic-work-related field notes are considered interrelated, forming a collective language around artistic research and the reflections hereof, even if they are situated in close proximity to and connection with specific works.
The cluster of islands labeled ‘FIELD NOTES FROM ISLAND’ comprises a series of field notes compiled during the production of the first series of works produced for Oceanic Horror. While these works are also present in the final exhibition of this research project, they were also presented as a self-contained solo show in the staircase of Kunsthall 3,14 in Bergen, forming my midways presentation, titled 'Cable ITCH (I don’t wanna work at Island no more)'. In the following notes the collective body of works are often referred to with this overall title. A large amount of the research work in this part of the project revolved around the trading firm ‘Island’, that played a crucial part in the advent of high frequency trading. From their offices in Broad St. NYC, Island revolutionised the trading business and lay down the foundation for the type of online high frequency trading that dominates the stock market today.
These field notes combine analyses and theoretical notions, with direct hands-on experiences, experiments, artistic turning points and choices. Here, the type of meandering thinking around notions of socio-political realities and mediated sensations, intermixes with the very knots and bolts of creating artistic work dealing with such theoretical and emotional landscapes.
Many of these reflections relate directly to this first body of work, but the story they tell and the reflections they unfold forms a reflective space that has surrounded this research project in whole. They do tell a very specific story of the Island venture, spearheaded by computer programmer and free information idealist Joshua Levine, but from this story a rolling terrain of reflections unfold. Reflections on:
The role of financialisation in society and about the kind of order we assign to the extremely disorderly.
The neoliberal ideology of deregulation and the way its anti-exist mantra in reality cultivates the grounds for a new powerful elite.
The eeriness of coded environments, algorithms and office work.
The role of CGI in visual culture and its the authoritative spell of high production value.
Splatter capitalism and the abject quality of CGI.
As well as reflections on artistic choices and turning points including:
The choices made around designing the many 3D environments of this production.
The non-human POV and the look awry.
The role of the human body or absence hereof.
The relationship between the filmic medium and CGI.
The relationship between the non-materiality of the CGI environment and the material value of the art product.
The relationship between body and camera.
The handling of changing circumstances in larger art productions and how the meandering methodology enables a fluid incorporation of obstacles and shifting realities.
The use of sound and no sound.
The ethics involved with using real personas in transrealist narratives.
Many of these reflections are echoed in the work revolving around ‘Archipelago’, a production that is a direct artistic continuation of the works reflected on here. As field notes these reflections allow themselves to shift in pacing, theoretical depth, perspective and style. Allowing the movement between languages and the shaping of a reflection space on how these movements unfold.
