Toying with expected dimensions - Helen Stewart

Irreversibility is one of the staples of modern life, of humanity, and therefore of art. Irreversibility is a word for the unchangeable state of what is, of what makes things what they are, and of what must be in order for there to be anything to be at all. Death is the most obvious example, it must exist the same as birth must exist, but it is an example that lacks creativity in most cases. The permanence of death is not something that most people will feel the need to toy with, whereas art is irreversible in a way that begs for exploitation. It cannot be naturally reversed, because it will always affect someone with its existence, since it cannot come into existence by itself. It is often unrepeatable, the digital arts proving an occasional exception, its dependability on personal gesture imperative.

Susie Pratt's windscreen wiper animation is an example of this. The restriction of an object such as windscreen wipers to two dimensions within a drawing takes away all but the visual aspect, which, after all, is only a representation. Then the wipers' movement is returned through animation, a mere shadow of their common existence, the mechanics of the objects trivialized by the simplistic animation platform of images on axis' moving to a time line. They are even granted a faux 'interaction' with the surface of the monitor, an illusion to suggest reality, representing the contact between rubber and glass, both as a sound and a suggestion of texture and pressure existing between surfaces. It enhances our acceptance that the object is what it is, even though it is no longer in possession of any of its own, original qualities.

Right - Susie Pratt 'before you', film still, 2006