The Screen
Rob Jonesthe [...] space
17 February - 18 March 2018
The SOLAS Project
Light as Data | Data is Light
“Everything is light…”
The incomprehensible undersea network of submarine cables physically connects the internet together, grounding it in its very materiality. Data travels as light along these submerged fibre optic cables resurfacing once again as data whilst (digital) photography takes the light from the world as its starting point and encodes it as data.
The SOLAS Project is a light odyssey that contemplates the relationship between nature and technology and poses questions around the place of photography in the 21st century where the focus of power is based around fibre optics rather than the optical nerve. Part critique of representation and abstraction in photography, part contemplation of the internet as heterotopia juxtaposing the real with the virtual, the SOLAS Project philosophises using Deleuzian concepts such as difference (and repetition) and ideas regarding emergence and immanence to find creative expressions, where nature is transposed through technology.
‘Everything is Light’ – becomes a metaphor where data is light and light is data and attempts to question through the SOLAS Project the relationship between light and data. This leads to an enquiry asking “how can raw data itself be used to construct images of the world through photography?” By exploring ways to make connections within an ever evolving rhizomatic network, photos become ‘food’ generatively eaten by foraging mycelium spores encoded in processing algorithms, thus photography itself is put through its paces, leading to a contemplation of its role in representing and abstracting the world into images and asking once again “what has photography become in the networked age?”
Biography: Rob Jones
Rob Jones is based in Swansea and is a Senior Lecturer in Film & TV at Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
Rhwydwaith tanfor annealladwy o raffau angor llongau tanfor yn cysylltu’r rhyngrwyd at ei gilydd, daearyddu yn ei fateroldeb. Teithia data fel golau ar hyd y rhaffau ffibr tanddaearol yma gan ailgodi unwaith eto fel data tra gymer ffotograffiaeth (ddigidol) golau o’r byd fel ei bwynt dechrau a’i drosi i god fel data.
Taith golau yw’r Prosiect SOLAS sydd yn ystyried y berthynas rhwng natur a thechnoleg ac sydd yn gofyn cwestiynau o amgylch lle ffotograffiaeth yn y 21ain Ganrif lle mae ffocws pŵer wedi ei selio o amgylch ffibr optig yn hytrach na’r nerf optegol. Yn rhannol astudiaeth o gynrychiolaeth ac abstractiaeth yn ffotograffiaeth, rhan astudiaeth o’r rhyngrwyd fel heterotopia yn cyfosod y gwirioneddol gyda’r rhithwir, athronydda’r Prosiect SOLAS gan ddefnyddio cyd-destunau Deleuzian megis gwahaniaeth (ac ailadrodd) a syniadau i ymwneud a tharddiad a mewnfodaeth i ddarganfod ystumiau creadigol, lle mae natur wedi ei drawsosod trwy dechnoleg.
‘Popeth yn Olau’ - daw’n drosiad lle mae data yn olau a golau yn ddata a cheisia gwestiynu trwy’r Prosiect SOLAS y berthynas rhwng golau a data. Arweinia hyn i archwiliad gan ofyn “sut gellid defnyddio data crai i adeiladu delweddau’r byd trwy ffotograffiaeth?” Trwy archwilio ffyrdd i greu cysylltiad o fewn rhwydwaith datblygol rheisomatig, daw lluniau’n ‘fwyd’ a fwyteir gan gelloedd myceliwm a drosir i god wrth brosesu algorithmau, gan roi ffotograffiaeth trwy ei ystumiau, gan arwain i fyfyrdod o’i rôl o gynrychioli ac abstractio’r byd i ddelweddau a gofyn unwaith eto “beth mae ffotograffiaeth wedi dod yn yr oes rwydweithiol?”
Bywgraffiad: Rob Jones
Seliwyd Rob Jones yn Abertawe ac mae’n Brif Ddarlithiwr yn Ffilm a Theledu yng Ngholeg Celf Abertawe, Prifysgol y Drindod Dewi Sant.
