News & Events

John Sturgeon & Christina Hung Exhibition
at low tide multimedia project with Christina Hung
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 //
Artothek, Oldenburg, Germany
http://atlowtide.net

at low tide is a collaborative, multimedia project by John Sturgeon and Christina Nguyen Hung that is part of an exhibition das Wattenmeer* in the Artothek, Oldenburg, Germany - from May 8 - June 30, 2009. The exhibition, organized by S.L.A.P. (Social Land Art Project), is part of a larger context of art and science activities funded by the Germany government, which has designated Oldenburg the City of Science - 2009.

In the exhibition, at low tide has two components: a computer display that allows gallery visitors to access the project's website and two panoramic photographs placed together as one image that offer different views of the Wattenmeer - one microscopic and the other, is a panoramic photo that highlights the surface of das watt.

at low tide - Project Statement:

The premise of the work at low tide is quite simple. In this artwork we challenge the one point perspective system, in use for hundreds of years, that has been used to transform land into landscape. The one point perspective system puts the human being at the center of the universe and all objects: animal, vegetable, mineral, mountain, desert, watt are organized around this central human axis. The organizing principle of at low tide is the multi-perspectival approach to image-making found in cartography, medieval painting and some panorama photography (NASA photos of the surface of the Mars). We used this multi-perspectival approach when we photographed the watt at two different scales. First, a 1 cm square sample of soil from the watt was photographed through a microscope. The other photograph represents a ten-meter square area of the surface of the watt made with a standard digital SLR camera. We had to employ a certain amount of technology bending to create the images with these tools (microscope, camera & software), as these traditional technologies and optics reinforce the perspective of an individual human. Working against/with and around these individual human-centered interfaces, we created an images of the place that transforms our visual relationship to it.

*das Wattenmeer (Wadden Sea) is the vast lowland tidal mud flats that stretch all along the coast of the North Sea, including Denmark, Germany and The Netherlands. Most of the coastal areas of all three countries has been designated a National Park conservation preserve.

View at low tide: gallery image