In my work, I attempt to orchestrate the acceleration that our species is currently undergoing, and I want to offer a means of drawing something positive from this process for a change. In terms of figures, we have exchanged more information (i.e. communication) in a decade, than in the entire history of humankind.
What survives? What is a universal image in the Age of Communication?
It may well take the shape of a dynamic cosmology of compressed pictorial information, a kind of hyper-image legible to any and every human eye. Brain research is at a stage where we know to a great extent how human vision and comprehension work: in every individual, comparably primitive visual codes are translated into real terms by being tallied against the extant images in the brain. In other words, with—or against—one’s personal experiences. Thence intact, total communication is an impossibility. But what is possible is images of meaning to any human being. I believe that understanding this approach will lead—in good time—to a new Enlightenment powered by neurology. Today, we know how we know, how we see.
My work offers the means for an empirical experience, to understand the information processing taking place within our own perception and in the machinery we employ, and to take delight in the beauty of these possibilities.
On my trips around the world as a „straight“ photographer, I travelled into unknown realms of perception and discovery. The venues and locations were extraordinary and enthralling, insane and megalomaniac, and I had the chance to have a look behind the curtains of a global tinsel-factory infatuated with mass entertainment: the Olympic games in Athens, the Arirang spectacle in North Korea, car racing in the desert somewhere in the Middle East, pop concerts all over the world, an empty Christian Dior store in Tokyo at night . . . to cut a long story short, those trips made me a "citizen of the planet."
I want to show a planet infested with a species in rage, in acceleration and constant motion—in that, becoming an abstract phenomenon. But I also want to show how much beauty we can find in this development we're in, when we see it as an adventure or a challenge. My images stand for the highspeed insanity we're facing every day.
We're constantly overloaded and many things become flat and shallow; although, theoretically, chances get better to find answers for our questions. It's the sheer explosion of information which our species has to learn to deal with and maneuver in. We're right in the middle of a selection: our old ideas are not very bearable and applicable any longer. We do need new philosophies! The ones who prevail in this vortex will get the whole species to the next level—like a computer game. That's not easy. My images are some deducts of the world I'm observing—a fast, overpowering world. Today I know that I have a neurological disorder of my brain absorbing too much of my environment—not very romantic for the idea of a genius. It's called ADD and nothing special.
To come up with beauty, whatever that may be, makes life better for all of us.
M.
