|
Fractured visuals of city scenes, colours, and texts
make up the visual tour which is part of Jody Zellen's
net-art piece entitled "Visual Chaos" (www.visualchaos.org).
On entering and navigating through the piece, one realizes
the layout is purposely confusing and cluttered while
attempting to present a balance between theme and aesthetic.
Throughout the work, photographs of generic cityscapes
are presented alongside each other. The photos survey
common city aspects representing images of architecture,
crowds, and isolated individuals caught in activity.
This imagery is augmented and offset by blocks of colour,
often arranged in large vertical or horizontal bars.
The accompanying photo-imagery is usually unclear or
out of focus and altered so its colour matches the accompanying
slabs of pure colour. Often colour bars are inserted
between fractured pieces of larger photographs. To add
to this chaotic and moving montage, random phrases and
poetical musings about city concepts are occasionally
inserted alongside the fractured imagery. This visual
space is further interrupted by image containing pop-up
windows moving over or lying on top of the main browser's
main content. Such content delivery adds further dynamic
to fractured space by offering another layer of information.
At other times, images are animated, whether it be flashing
through a slide show, expanding image size, or changing
image information as contingent on rollover actions.
The overall effect of these differing techniques seems
to be to create a visual space on screen that is constantly
changing, moving and being fractured. Every new occurrence
is different and unexpected, and the end result is an
impression of visual randomness.
There is a definite cohesive design in Zeller's work
that vies with the visual randomness. Indeed the aforementioned
colours are coordinated to be complimentary, where pictures
are purposely fractured with a consistent vertical or
horizontal movement. Pop-ups are placed so that they
seldom overlap each other and are arranged in accordance
with the main browser window.
Much of Zellen's other work is visually and compositionally
driven whether it be in her prints, installations, or
other websites. A great deal of her artwork deals with
the concept of the city, and many of the works tackle
this concept by the interspersing of colours with cityscape
imagery, like "Visual Chaos". Her "LA
Seen", "The Building Series", and projects,
for example, all feature collages with photographs of
city imagery - akin to those featured in "Visual
Chaos". In "Still Series", words are
also overlaid into the composition. The different pictures
are arranged beside, above, below, and inside one another,
and are each coloured, and overlaid with colour, differently
in a way that is complimentary, but emphasizes the difference
between the individual images. Within each piece, the
different pictures and colours appear interconnected,
as one work and one theme, yet at the same time each
frame create a sense of fractured disorder across the
space of the piece.
|