[spectre] Archive of Digital Art features Uršula Berlot with 36 Artworks + Interview

[Oliver Grau]

Archive of Digital Art features Uršula Berlot with 36 Artworks +
Interview 

Exploring hidden topographies and autopoietic imagery
https://www.digitalartarchive.at/features/featured-artists/featured-artist-ursula-berlot.html



Uršula Berlot invites us to immerse ourselves into the world beneath our
perception. As a philosopher, researcher and artist, she questions
scientific imagery such as simulations of life at the molecular level
and mathematical models in a poetic way. Microscopic and nano-scientific
images become digital animations in black and white that allow us to
freely experience this visual world, often in an expressive or dreamlike
quality. Her works deal with modellings of physicality, microbiology,
and radiology as well as light, simulacrum and magnetism. 

https://www.digitalartarchive.at/database/artists/general/artist/berlot.html


Berlot has exhibited her work at festivals, museums and research centres
around the world, e.g. Today Art Museum, Beijing, Museum of Modern Art,
Ljubljana, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. She has
collaborated with the Jožef Stefan Institute and the Clinical Institute
of Radiology, University Medical Centre in Ljubljana. For her digital
animations, she also works with designer Sunčana Kuljiš and with sound
artists like Robin Rimbaud and Alessandro Tedeschi. Since 2009, she has
worked as lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of
Ljubljana and has become Associate Professor in 2014. 


A Closer Gaze at Microscopic Level 

Scientific principles and reciprocal, proportional or relative processes
direct the composition and movements in her images. Viewers can immerse
themselves in this rhythmic and expressive animation. In “Bodygaze”
(2020) graphical images combine structures that look like microscopic
imagery and the morphology of bodily particles. The bodily tissue is
mediated in a variety of observation ratios: from stylised visible body
parts (abstracted forms of hair, eyelashes and skin structures) to
microscopic images of elementary bodily particles. 

There is a similarity to early film theory and Jean Epstein’s concept of
photo-genie. While Epstein and his colleagues were fascinated by
elevating everyday objects through filmic styles, Berlot gazes deeply
into scientific imagery and its simulation of life. Her animations go
beyond a close-up and represent reality through scientific analysis and
visualisation. In the end, our perception of reality is juxtaposed with
the visibility of the hidden world beneath and beyond it. Then and now,
visual technologies allow us to take a closer gaze and Berlot
investigates this within arts-based research. 

Ursula Berlot’s artworks deviate from knowledge recognition towards an
aesthetic exploration. To do this, she remixes, remediates and digitally
processes the initial sources of inspiration. Algorithmically coded
images reference the duality of mimesis and technologically generated
reality. They question today’s boundary between image/simulation and
original. 

In ”Cerebral landscapes (Reflections)” (2006) a kinetic light
installation visualises pulsating pre-cerebral states, mental-sensory
patterns and mental energies. Berlot understands this work also as an
artistic metaphor of dichotomy: reflection as the optic phenomenon of
light reflection or a mental activity – a concentrated process of
thinking. 

Her work can also be highly personal since Berlot often uses her own
body particles to create these images and animations. In the history of
the body in art, her interpretation is poetic and technical at the same
time: It is a self-portrait, a way of inscribing oneself into the work
and an experiment. By working on a microscopic level, Berlot takes a new
look at artistic identity and creation. The work ”Bodyfraction” (2020)
parallels microscopic images of fragments of the artist’s body with
recordings of drawings and light-sensitive objects created on their
basis. 


QUOTES 

Martin KEMP: Uršula Bworld of morphologies and processes at invisible scales. Not only does
she find thrilling variety in this literal microcosm but she also infers
fascinating analogies with what we see at the macro-scale. She is
technically accomplished to a high degree and manages to achieve a
compelling level of lyricism.  

Ingeborg FÜLEPP: The specificity of Berlot's engagement with media and
digital technology lies in her very experimental approach toward its
expressive capacities.  Instead of using media technology as a means in
itself her creative process is directed to explore the variety of states
of subjective perception. Her light installation at Media-Scape (Museo
Lapidarium, Novigrad, 2008) was wonderfully fitting the idea of bridging
the historical remains with the modern times. 

Tomislav VIGNJEVIĆ: One of the basic premises of Uršula Berlot's
artistic expression is undoubtedly her desire to enlarge and ensuing
practice of making visible that which is not before our eyes, that which
is not directly evident nor exposed to the view and analysis of the
viewer other than through her work. 

Nataša PETREŠIN BACHELEZ: In her art works, Uršula Berlot is observing
the influences of so called coincidences and the results that
uncontrolled processes cause. Her own "confronting the unknown" in the
form of creative openness to the characteristics of the used materials
(artificial resin and plexi glass) and to the gravity laws has brought
her to an abstract visual language. She is complementing it with the
scientific terminology and analogies, drawn from the processes occurring
in the nature.


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ADA: THOUSANDS OF ARTWORKS
Since its foundation in 1999, the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (former
Database of Virtual Art) has grown to be the most important online
archive for digital art. In cooperation with established media artists,
researchers and institutions it has been documenting the rapidly
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ARTISTS represented, among many others: Rebecca ALLEN, Suzanne ANKER,
Cory ARCANGEL, Roy ASCOTT, Louis BEC, Maurice BENAYOUN, Paolo CIRIO,
Charlotte DAVIES, FLEISCHMANN & STRAUSS, Masaki FUJIHATA, Ken GOLDBERG,
Agnes HEGEDÜS, Lynn HERSHMAN LEESON, Ryoji IKEDA, Eduardo KAC, Ken
RINALDO, KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH, Lev MANOVICH, George LEGRADY, Golan LEVIN,
Rafael LOZANO-HEMMER, Joseph NECHVATAL, Michael NAIMARK, David ROKEBY,
Jeffrey SHAW, Julius v. BISMARCK, Paul SERMON, Karl SIMS, SOMMERER &
MIGNONNEAU, STANZA, Nicole STENGER, THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD, Peter WEIBEL,
et al.

Advisory board: Christiane PAUL, Roy ASCOTT, Erkki HUHTAMO, Gunalan
NADARAJAN, et. al.

EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION FOR THE NEEDS OF DIGITAL ART
Due to the processual, ephemeral, interactive, technology-based and
fundamentally context-dependent character of digital art, it is at risk
for becoming extinct without an adequate documentation. Therefore, the
ADA is based on an expanded concept of documentation, which takes
account of the specific conditions of digital art.


ADA TEAM:
Oliver GRAU 
Nicole HIGH-STESKAL, Janina HOTH, Wendy COONES, Ann-Christin RENN, Viola
RÜHSE, (Editorial Team)
digitalart.editor at donau-uni.ac.at