Solveig Settemsdal & Melkeveien - the i sea

the i sea, the newest video work from London-based artist Solveig Settemsdal, owes its existence to one of the first verses of 14th century poet Dante Alighieri’s epic poem Inferno: “in the midway of this our mortal life I found myself on a darkened path, astray.” Working in response to what Settemsdal terms “a great flattening,” the artist takes aim at conventional, materialist theories of the observable universe, looking towards speculative fiction, alternate models of understanding and the contemporary condition of the image at a time in which reality can be said to be unfolding in both virtual and physical space simultaneously, for a new way to look at the world from a position of emotional and literal entanglement. “It’s about knowing, for a fact, that at most points in the past, in the place into which I was born, I would have been burnt as a witch,” says Settemsdal about the film. “It’s about quantum physics, but most of all and most importantly, it’s about relationships, how we see and are seen, how we change and are changed. And I don’t think you need to know about any of these things when you watch it.” Drawing particular influence from Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli’s recent book Helgoland, which details his thoughts on quantum mechanics and relational interpretation, first developed by Werner Heisenberg while secluded on the titular island in the North Sea in 1925, the i sea develops Rovelli’s desire to move away from “naive materialism,” instead working towards, in the physicists own words: “a theory that accounts for a structure of the universe that clarifies what it is to be an observer in the universe – not a theory that makes the universe depend on me.”

Within the world of the i sea, the silence of the sea is filled with a constantly mutating score by Kristian Møller Johansen, the producer known as Melkeveien, whom Settemsdal at art school in Oslo back in 2005 which throbs between eerie low-end ambience and shuffling synthetic beat science, as though flickering between two conflicting perspectives of the same scene, created using analog drum machines, organismic and monophonic synthesisers and recordings of electromagnetism, including recordings of fluorescent lighting from elevators and phone booths. Muddled in-between these perspectives on the world, we are presented with a literal eye, restlessly gazing back at the viewer, a mirrored image of the participatory observation we as the audience are ourselves entangled within as we view Settemsdal’s work. In this way, the artist shines a light on what she perceives as a lack of empathy for both the viewer and the viewed, illuminating a greater significance on both the roles of the observer and the observed as active shapers of the universe, collapsing the distinction between artist and audience, between reader and writer in a defiant move against the dissolving of the materialist world into content. “There is a great flattening happening, with all human experience compressed onto screens, all things condensed into language and human culture, everything becoming second, third hand experience,” asserts Settemsdal. “We are told, we don’t feel. We don’t play. We are so tempted to escape into a clean digital future fantasy, which seems increasingly unsustainable as we struggle to keep the lights on.” In response, the artist posits a different way to think and feel through the world, to operate from a point of view inextricably entangled within the world.

As her sculptures rotate, are submerged in primordial ooze and burnt to cinders, it is our entanglement with those objects, both Settemsdal’s and our own, that lend them their presence. “Looking IS changing something,” concludes Settemsdal. “What does nature care whether or not something is being observed? We could see the world being reflected in the observer and not the other way around. The only way to learn about something is to get entangled with it. The cat is yawning.”

[JoeDurica]

Thanks for posting this! I really miss art style video and this hits the spot!

[deadboy]

Creating process may be difficult and also fun, new ideas come to your mind during that process, your potential become less, and your experience grows...
And the result of making choices creates a new platform with settings for another level of creating...
The thought of reality is more real than reality itself.
Your attention is always seeking for balance point, so you could make a worthwhile decision.
If you could make something good and valuable, it should make you happy and proud.