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 " Do It Yourself : Photoshop Un-Plugged "
'splashspleen' is the last of a series of sampled
images 'translated to plastic' by Norbert Bayer,
using a children creativity game called 'Ministeck'
originating somewhere in the 70's, in which colored
plastic pushpins are placed on a grid, creating a
rough, 'pixelized' image.
As used to be mostly the case with the original
'Ministeck' hobby artists, Bayer chose a ready-made
image to recreate, the image being no other than the
title image ('splash screen' in software industry
terms) of the known contemporary image
manipulation tool for the masses, Adobe's software
environment Photoshop. This image, originally
created by American computer artist Jeff Schewe,
shows a professional 72mm lens, a flock of doves
and a big blue eye in a golden frame. A composition
that suggests the 'perfect image', and would do so
also to audiences unfamiliar with the software
itself.
This choice for 'the image of imaging' implies the
tension of similarity and difference between content
and form in the visual work: both 'Ministeck' and
Photoshop are clear slates, 'pixel boards' for laying
out any possible two dimensional images. Yet while
Photoshop brings about 'high-tech' image creation,
the 'Ministeck' recreation is 'low-tech' or rather
'no-tech' by nature. And when reproduced 1:1 on the
'Ministeck' grid, each screen pixel (the techno-term
for picture-element) becomes one plastic element,
and the original onscreen virtual image becomes a
monumental 'plastic painting', physical and suitable
to the earlier canvas restricted exhibition wall.
As an old wise Chinese once said:
"One picture is
worth a thousand words".
Yet digitally speaking,
'splashspleen' is precisely 60512 plastic-pixels
worth.
Dominique Busch & Yariv Alter Fin
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