S o n o r o u s
Pascale Bardos, Sonorous, 2018, C-type photographic prints, rag paper, 96 x 127cm.
“A poetic understanding takes place through unconscious identification, simulation, and internalization. While rational understanding calls for a critical distance and separation from the subject, poetic “understanding” requires nearness and empathy. In fact, art is not about understanding at all, as an artistic image is an existential encounter which momentarily re-orients our entire sense of being.”(1)
Exploring conceptual contemplations of capturing light, I investigated catching light through photography and began to experiment with photolithography. This exploration led to a tangible experience of light through a bodily conversation. Physically handling and interacting with the exposure of light onto lithographic plates, I came to grasp the properties of light on a tangible scale and onto a two-dimensional plane. This investigation informed my understanding of light when it’s suffused into a three-dimensional space. From manually manipulating the exposure on the plates, I continued the printmaking process, transferring captured light into a pigment relief. I came to contemplate the causal affect of light when transfused onto a surface and how light can be experienced when emitted through pigment on paper.
‘Sonorous’ is an observational investigation of the sky over an extended period of time. The three prints document a visual representation of the transition of time, depicted through shifting colours and gradations. In this way, colour is used as a measurement of time. Taken minutes apart, the colour gradients of the images have subtle differences and at first glance appear to be similar if not the same. The variances are revealed when moving around the space as the still image is activated by the movement of the body. This provides a platform for shifting perceptual interactions. From a distance, the prints act as windows, portals into the world as well as into a continued space beyond the wall. A shift occurs when the viewer moves closer to the prints as the pixels and technology behind the image are exposed, providing a window into the notions of documentation and the chosen mode of measurement. Attention is brought to the lens of perception and the presence of the framework that composes the human experience of the world along with the individual empirical encounter that is supplanted on top. The transition of light perceived by the eye as well as the digital lens, both validate reality.
Juhani Pallasmaa, “Towards a Neuroscience of Architecture,” in Architecture and Neuroscience, ed. Philip Tidwell, (Finland: Tapio Wirkkala, 2013), 12.