Actual - artificial: Images generated and presented in natural and digital environments

This project explores the transformation of images through the use of digital media. It is an investigation into image manipulation and recontextualisation. It follows a circular concept – Nature to Digital to Nature, challenging how the ‘Natural’ and ‘Artificial’ are perceived. While ‘Nature’ has often been regarded from an essentialist view point, I have taken the position where the concept of nature is a constructed reality, just as the digital environment is a constructed reality. The digital images I am making are continually changing - just as nature is continually changing. They are reconstructed images, recontextualised in man made, hybrid and natural spaces. My aim is firstly to explore the relationships of digital images with the images of nature and secondly to provoke the viewer to question the boundaries between the natural and the artificial. The use of digital media in the transformation of images facilitates a paradigm shift giving opportunities of creative input for the technologies, changing the traditional role. Since the process of transforming images involves creative editing and the images produced are re-presented in unfamiliar ways it could also be said that the traditional concept of ‘art’ and the way it is received is changing. My experimental approach is not reproduced by other artists but artists are mastering digital media and digital media technologists are becoming more creative. Boundaries and oppositions are being challenged in this project. The process used involves taking photographs, as images from the natural environment and transferring them into the computer, the digital environment. The images are then transformed and reconstructed. These new images are then manipulated through the process of compositing into moving images and finally projected onto fabric and other surfaces resulting in new forms of imagery. These new images are made up of light, colour and movement. They are also affected by the various surfaces (fabric, walls, vegetation) and by their placement in specific locations (parks, gardens, etc). The resulting images are transformed expressions of ‘nature’. The possible variants for projection scale and locations are multiple. When the images are recontextualised in a natural setting they obscure boundaries between ‘natural’ and 'artificial’, between the ‘real’ and virtual reality. They challenge the viewer to distinguish between digital media representation and reality