Aspect Ratio

By now the technology has progressed so much further and artists are also finding new forms to explore classical notions such as dimension and relationships of scale. From nanotechnological close-ups to cosmic majesty, the exhibition Aspect Ratio examines how visual art and science enter into dialogue around the central issue: the human being as the measure in a constantly expanding technological universe.

In the twenty-first century the electronic screen has experienced an absolute breakthrough. From wristwatch to mp3 player, from the personal computer to every street corner, it is impossible to imagine life without viewing screens. From the huge multiplex silver screen to the display of a mobile phone, from the wide-screen home cinema to the screen built into the headrest of a seat in a train or airplane, from the monitor in a pocket game-console to the entire façade (or even ‘skin’) of a commercial building: screens are omnipresent and assume every conceivable shape and form.

An important side effect of this is the loss of the incorruptible image format, and the neglect of the fixed ‘aspect ratio’, the attention for the specific proportions inherent to every cinematographic image. There are two pressing questions: How ‘elastic’ has the notion ‘screen’ become? And how ‘elastic’ is the human capacity for comprehension? The huge explosion of formats and technological innovations, each characterized by a game involving scale and dimensions has an ambiguous effect. On the one hand a range of inspiring possibilities are created, and on the other many confusing side effects resulting from this rapid development.

Miniaturization
Great revolutions sometimes have small causes. The miniaturization that results from ever-smaller microprocessors has an impact on numerous fronts. Not just the screens, the cameras are also constantly shrinking in size. The unwieldy 35mm camera was suddenly facing competition from registration techniques that are barely the size of a ballpoint pen. In science the photographic camera ‘as a window on the world’ has long been superseded and replaced by other methods of visualization. Thus nanotechnological images are created by means of electron or atomic microscopes, and a source of light is certainly no longer necessary to make something visible. The high technology camera is an active agent that ‘encodes’ a visual representation for us instead of making an analogue reproduction of it.

The human eye has long since ceased to be the reference with which to observe the world. Our powers of imagination are continually being surpassed by scientific images of the imperceptible. The ‘shrinking’ and resulting omnipresence of technology has an effect on the way in which we function in the world, as well as how we see ourselves, how we position ourselves in that larger, increasingly complex whole. The cinema brought us the ‘close up’, which fantastically enriched our cultural idiom: the photographic detail, tremendously vivid and hugely enlarged on the big screen. But technology is by now so advanced that we are no longer surprised at seeing unborn life that can be tracked in 3D, or a piece of DNA that is puzzled together in front of our eyes.