Fulgur
Heiko Daxl
Photo-monitor-installation
7 photographs, 1 monitor, 1 signal source, approx. 1m x 6 m
The electro-magnetic reaction of a tube video-camera, when it heating up by switching on abruptly has been extended by using time-lapse and was made visible as a RGB-eruption. Photographs have been taken from the monitor.
These photographs are arranged vertically, so that the effect of a light-wave as well as a lightning springs up. At the place of impact a monitor, that emanates pure RGB-colours is set up. On the monitor is the inscription "Fulgur Conditum".
In the classic mythology Jupiter was worshipped as the God of light, he also was named Lucetius. Ambivalence is one of his most substantial characteristics, even in his relation to man. He was indeed acknowledged as the supreme God, but Aristoteles tells us that "it is absurd, if someone says, he loves him". So he is the cause of happiness and disaster, glory and misery. He pours out with two jugs the good and the bad destiny. As the God of weather he had the power of thunder and lightning (Jupiter Fulgur).
The places where a lightning stroke in were revered as holy localities, where people build up rectangular "Puteali", where, so to say, the divine light of Jupiter was captured and subdued. Even as celestial signs to read the future lightning were interpreted.
One eventual prospective concerned to the ambivalence of video and other electronic arts might be the following: by means of reaction to impulses of light from the physical world, electronic media are limited, producing reproductions, referring an already existing reality and burying it lately as a copy. In various fields video for instance has, as a medium of illustration, replaced in fact the film, but did not create in many cases something of actual relevance and originality. Effective advancements of an artistic visual culture will not happen in endless variations of the same matter, but in constant individual stylistic expansion of the basic elements of a medium. Solely artistic dynamics in exploration and penetration of the modern tools of tele-communication can lead to new universes of images.
However, we should not stand still, blindfolded and paralysed by the lightning, but contour extended aims. So let us open his "Puteal" and use the energy. "Fantasy", as Apollonius says, "created these works, which is a more wise originator than imitation. Imitation will just create, what it has seen before, but fantasy even that, what it has not seen, because it will imagine it in proportion to entity."