Entropy from Kerem Ozan Bayraktar on Vimeo.
Entropy, 2009, 01:09 min. Computer Animation, Stereo
Interview with Marcus Graf about work
-Could you please describe with a few sentences your work that you have shown at the exhibition. What is it about and what were its formal parameters as well as conceptual issues that you were interested in?
-I made this work when the period during the tridimensional site commercials were rising considerably. Usage of photographic simulations in commercial language comples me to use it as well. When i see such buildings, i remember the apocalpytic scenes in Hollywood movies. Things like floods, eartquakes or huge explosions. I decided to use the term entropy for this reason. In my opinion, the basement below the snow sphere and its delayed movement shows an action will end ultimately, like a mechanical clock. The resistance of the system make it more vulnerable.
The buildings and snow aren’t affected by the gravity although the sphere tilts. The space in which the buildings are, exists within the same time as the sphere. This situation doubles the space of the video. Finally, when the space where watch the video is also involved, the reality becomes utterly fragile.
Same situation also applies to time. Snow sphere, reminds us of the new year gifts, the past and childhood. Interestingly, the feelings we experience when we contemplate the past, resemble the feelings conceive prediction about the future.
-You are mentioning that the number of 3D animations i commercials increase constantly.
One of the reason is most probably the animation's ability to produce perfect images of perfect world-illusions, which try to sell us information about the ideal smell, ideal body, ideal beauty etc.
Though, in your video, the viewer sees no beautiful world, but a dark scene, which reminds me of the Blade Runner aesthetic.
Besides that, your glass bowl does not show historical places in Sultan Ahmet and no Bosporus view. instead you show anonymous, ugly, grey concrete buildings. You also paint and take photos. Why did you create a computer animation for the work at our exhibition instead of using real images?
-Yes, Blade Runner is a movie which impressed me a lot. I think, looking to future with dystopic point of view, also generates critique of today. A lot of the cyberpunk story produced in the past, are real now.
The reason that i use animation, trying to imitate hyperreal language. It’s because, a computer-produced image is the image that abstracted from space and time, it has no materiality, exist from out of nothing. For me, this situation is parallel to absence of the signs in video.
-You are using a glass bowl that we know from souvenir shops all over the world. Your's looks different though. Do you think that souvenir shops in istanbul could/ should sell this?
-Souvenir shops are virtual units too. The gifts which are bought from these shops, creates considerably generalized virtual memory instead of subjective experience about city’s history. It’s possible to say it’s a kind of memory industry.
It’s difficult to decide but it could be nice that shops sell my work.
-What importance is sound playing in your work?
-Sound is very important element for to visualize space. Sometimes, even not using sound gives idea about it. I used construction, highway and airport sounds in background of work. Far from city, cold, strange and global sounds so to speak.
-Right now, you stay for a while in Newcastle, England. What kind of harassment do you experience over there and how does it differ from the ones we have here in istanbul?
-The things that attracted my attention since i came here are the “mysterious” construction works. I say mysterious because it’s not clear what is being done.
These areas, which usually block the pedestrian traffic, stay without even small change for weeks. In the middle of a park, where steel fences, exaggerated amount of the security signs, a container and an uncanny dozer get together, and remind of a murder scene. I guess, each construction reminscent to its own city. The construction sites in Istanbul are cluttier and more scattered.
