Flov"er 2006
Huang Po-Chih
黃博志
Production date
2006
Object Detail
Media
video (colour, sound)
Measurements
5 min 46 sec
Notes
A fascination with the flux of contemporary life emerged in Huang’s work while he was still a student. The animation Flov"er 2006 (2006), an early video work that represents his interest in adaptive technologies, may at first seem quite unlike Huang’s later work, but on closer examination reveals its conceptual connection. Huang scanned different flowers — roses, chrysanthemums, lavender, sunflowers, chamomile and tulips — and used the limitations of scanning technology to create effects of blurring and movement. The artist is extremely short-sighted, and thinks of the scanner, with its limited focal length, as being like himself: a myopic person refusing to wear glasses. The artist explains that his title is derived from a formula: ‘Flower = F l o w e r = F l o v e r = Flow + love + lover’, which similarly shifts and blurs the constituent words. He moved the flowers around on the glass of the scanner as if painting with a brush, pushing, pulling, squeezing and pressing them into different shapes. Finally, after several months, he had more than ten thousand images; chunks of digital data that could be sequenced as an animation — it becomes a kind of floating world.
Huang Po-Chih tries to avoid digital manipulation or excessive post-production, preferring the integrity of the images as they are scanned. The extraordinarily high level of resolution that he achieves, and the sense of movement in each separate scan even before the images are combined into a sequence, creates a dynamic sense of flow. The result is magical. The flowers move on twirling stems as if dancing, at first slowly, a little jerkily, then gradually faster and faster until their shapes become colourful streams of movement, like swirling bolts of silk being unfurled. The petals of the flowers appear to open, close, and collapse, then stream like bright flames. The tulips, especially, are like gorgeous seventeenth century Dutch paintings brought to life, then suddenly switched to fast-forward. Huang Po-Chih is, ultimately, interested in the passage of time. Each separate frame of Flov”er 2006 is one tiny remembered moment, and each moment represents the temporary nature of sensory experience and the transience of life itself.
Huang Po-Chih tries to avoid digital manipulation or excessive post-production, preferring the integrity of the images as they are scanned. The extraordinarily high level of resolution that he achieves, and the sense of movement in each separate scan even before the images are combined into a sequence, creates a dynamic sense of flow. The result is magical. The flowers move on twirling stems as if dancing, at first slowly, a little jerkily, then gradually faster and faster until their shapes become colourful streams of movement, like swirling bolts of silk being unfurled. The petals of the flowers appear to open, close, and collapse, then stream like bright flames. The tulips, especially, are like gorgeous seventeenth century Dutch paintings brought to life, then suddenly switched to fast-forward. Huang Po-Chih is, ultimately, interested in the passage of time. Each separate frame of Flov”er 2006 is one tiny remembered moment, and each moment represents the temporary nature of sensory experience and the transience of life itself.
Accession number
2016.195