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Tam s Waliczky - Anne-Marie Duguet
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Two key features characterize the computer pieces that Tam s
Waliczky has been elaborating since 1987. First of all, they comprise
a set of experiments into the status, limits and construction of an
image, and second, they are closely related to Waliczky's own personal
history. In what constitutes for the moment a first series--The
Garden (1992), Der Wald (1993) and The Way (1994), produced in
collaboration with Anna Szepesi--Waliczky explored a range of
potential approaches to representation by creating various systems of
perspective. Space-generating software is typically based on the
classical model of costruzione legittima, and a given scene is
generally computed as a function of a virtual "camera" external to
that scene. In opposition to these standard rules, Waliczky has
developed specific programs that either challenge exteriority,
generate effects of deep space through other modalities, or even
compute inverted perspective. These operations, moreover, are
conducted throughout the duration of an animated sequence.
The Garden replaces an objective, theoretical viewpoint (such as
classical perspective offers) with the subjective vision of a child.
All objects in the digitally synthesized garden in which the child
roams are represented as a function of the direction of her gaze and
her distance from them--as she approaches an object, it grows bigger
and undergoes specific distortions. Waliczky employed the "WAter-dRoP
Perspective System" to establish this dynamic relationship with the
perceived environment, producing a constant metamorphosis of the
overall scene as a function of the attention, movement and activities
of the little girl in the center. In this "water-drop"
micro-universe, it is no longer the observer but rather "the subject
of the picture that plays the main role." Observers have not
completely disappeared, however, for they attend a staged act of
representation that necessarily throws them back onto their own
voyeuristic activity. Waliczky's system incorporates a double
vision--the mobile one of the child, internal to the depicted space
where the notion of image loses its pertinence, and the static one of
the observer watching her perceive her world in a different way. Two
interwoven mode of representation, the second monitoring the first.
Der Wald generates a different experience--that of wandering through a
limitless forest. Here, perspective is no longer subjected to
geometry and the eye is no longer the apex of a visual pyramid. The
illusion of depth in the forest is established according to another
principle, comparable to a set of transparent cylinders that have
trees drawn all over their surfaces and that fit inside one another
like Russian dolls. In this way, the largest trees appear on the
nearest surface, and the smallest trees on the smallest cylinders.
The system is refined through various tricks and constraints, such as
the addition of a misty effect that masks trees beyond the fifth layer
of images, thereby limiting the density of the forest, or such as a
similarity in the depiction of the lower and upper parts of the trees
that allows for unlimited vertical repetition. Thus the field of
representation can not only be entered, it also extends endlessly
beyond its own frame. No more ground, no more horizon--Waliczky has
created an impression of perspective. Infinity is no longer linked to
a vanishing point, it deploys itself across every dimension of the
image. Moving in various directions within this space inevitably
means getting lost. There are no reference points to orient this
fluid, floating stroll through an atemporal forest, through an idea of
forest drawn in black and white, where the only trace of human
presence is a traditional child's ditty about the Black Forest
(alluding to remote childhood). Waliczky's exploration of the density
of imagery thereby assumes mythological dimensions.
The Way directly addresses the issue of perspective once again, but
this time by inverting viewpoint and vanishing point. The scene
depicts a central road lined on both sides by houses, synthesized in
what Waliczky calls a "photorealist" manner. The image is structured
in Renaissance perspective fashion, and it incorporates enough
similitude for illusionism to function. Although the observer's
viewpoint has once again recovered its frontality and exteriority, it
undergoes a strange trial: inversion means that the nearest elements
are the smallest. This effect would create little more than an
unusual impression if the scene were not animated. However, a person
seen from the back (videotaped and replicated at different scales)
runs toward an endlessly widening horizon, while the houses defining
the vanishing point converge and disappear in front of the
viewer--they collapse right before the eye, dragging the gaze into
their fall.
These three studies display the simplicity and power of major
interrogations. Although they deploy a minimum of elements in
exploring the relationships between human beings and environment
(natural and architectural), their execution is nevertheless complex
and occasionally demands long and painstaking work.
Waliczky's approach belies the opinion which holds that the use of
computers produces only a cold, emotionless universe, devoid of
history. The autobiographical nature of his oeuvre is constantly
manifest, through images of himself and his wife in early works and of
his daughter in The Garden, and through the choice of sites, music and
subjects that provide clues to his life in Hungary and, more recently,
Germany. Waliczky sees this series as a trilogy of a family--The
Garden allegedly represents the child, Der Wald the wife, The Way the
husband. The intimacy and poetry of his compositions derive mainly
from an appropriation of reality as inscribed in subtle composite
images, incorporating filmed characters into digitized worlds. Prior
to using computers, Waliczky produced cartoons, paintings, films. He
has thus taken a whole range of procedures, figures and issues
concerning the history of representation and technology, and wed them
to a bold and systematic exploration of the logic of computers. That
is what lends special importance to his work.
The subtitle of The Garden is a "21st-Century Amateur Film." In this
case, however, we are obviously dealing with an enlightened amateur,
an amateur in the sense of one who loves, who knows and, above all,
who is sufficiently committed to meet the challenges he sets
himself.
Translated from the French by Deke Dusinberre
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Jan. 19(Fri)- Feb. 12(Mon),1996 [Finished]
NTT / ICC Gallery
Artist Talk