Exploring potentials and shortcomings
Sarah Dahlinger is a current Flux Factory’s resident artist and she created the work, Tunnel Vision, for Artificial Retirement. She used the Instagram’s old interface and created a single-channel video. Her glamorous moving image on a door size projection screen will be exhibited for three weeks at Flux Factory’s gallery.
Dahlinger is a visual artist coming from Portland, ME. Her work often pulls from specific venues that offer entertainment, distraction and escape in an effort to contemplate the relationship between moments of extraordinary circumstance and the inevitable return to day-to-day routine. She has recently shown in the Danube Video Art Festival (Grein, Austria), First Street Gallery (NYC), InLight Richmond (Richmond, Virginia), and Athens International Film and Video Festival (Athens, Ohio).
What made you to apply for Artificial Retirement?
Artificial Retirement presents an opportunity to consider our relationships with technology in an era when it is more prevalent than ever. When we encounter failure and errors and begin to ‘misuse’ the vast tools and resources we have access to, exciting discoveries can be made. My recent work uses the social media interface Instagram as a means to explore the application’s potentials and shortcomings, and ultimately consider the ramifications of it as a filtered lens of communication.
What would be the keywords to demonstrate your inspiration for Tunnel Vision related to Artificial Retirement themes?
The main themes of the exhibition- destruction, failure and imperfection- are all at work in Tunnel Vision. The video was made using Instagram and is made up of screen shots of the Instagram user interface. The image is cropped, deteriorated, and filtered using the tools provided in the application. I want to acknowledge the inability of applications like this to fully represent someone/something/someplace and highlight the magnitude of how these systems of communication alter images and potentially warp perspectives.
My recent work uses the social media interface Instagram as a means to explore the application’s potentials and shortcomings, and ultimately consider the ramifications of it as a filtered lens of communication.
Why do you use Instagram interface for your work?
I used Instagram for this video to literally, and metaphorically, show how much power an application like this holds to alter a single image. The phrase ‘tunnel vision’ references narrow mindedness, or a way of seeing without acknowledgment or awareness of the greater context. Social media applications, like Instagram, embody this idea as a web of carefully curated profiles and feeds. Despite the, often obvious, discrepancy from the whole picture, or the whole story, these apps are common and constant modes of sharing and consuming information. This cultural prevalence, as well as my own usage, made me want to explore its impact, and its limits.
Gallery Hours: August 19 until September 11, 2016, Thursday through Sunday 1pm — 6pm or by appointment.
Contact: artificialretirement@fluxfactory.org
Artificial Retirement is one of Flux Factory’s 2016 major exhibitions curated by Jung In Jung and Joelle Fleurantin.
