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Play, download and edit the free video The Ruins, 3-channel version, 2020: 3 minute excerpt of 10 minutes animated loop.

The Ruins implements still lifes, the classical form of a memento mori, to contemplate the decay of western civilization, using as its central metaphor the canons of modernist painting and the manifestos of failed utopias. The works are meditations on the flow of history, expressed as a cycle of decay and regeneration. The Ruins is an antidote to a world in crisis, navigating from a Eurocentric paradigm of fixed photographic capture into a reality of malleable and inherently unstable computer simulations and systemic collapse. The exhibition presents a different notion of time, a present that viewers experience through the possibility of simulation technologies that use scientific data to model natural forces, the crystallization of past, future and present into a perpetual now.

The Ruins, the central artwork from which the exhibition gains its title, is an audiovisual animation tracking through a claustrophobic game world from which there is no escape. As the three-channel maze unravels, Hart introduces her newest interpretation of still lifes—low polygon models. These models, hearkening to the idea of a poor copy or image popularized by Hito Steryl, are computer-made replications of copyright-protected paintings. Copyright marks the beginning of Modernism as a response to the emerging technology of photography, so Hart translates works by Matisse and Picasso, patriarchs of the Modernist canon, in flirtatious copyright infringement. Three monumental animations, The Orange Room, Green Table, and Big Red, seizes the compositional structures of The Red Paintings by Henri Matisse to propose a paradigm shift in painting practice, creating monumental animations at real painting scale. These works are constructed as images-within-images, architectures that open onto windows and doors, and lead into simulated landscapes bestowed with animated paintings, carpets and wallpapers, unfolding at different rates to mesmerize viewers, ushering them into a state of contemplation.

Music composed by Edmund Campion furthers the ethos of modernism through the tactical mixing of failed Utopian ideologies: Thomas Jefferson “On American Liberty”; “The Bauhaus Manifesto” by Walter Gropius; “Fordlandia”, Henry Ford’s failed suburban rubber plantation in the Amazon rainforest; and Jim Jones’s sermon, “Open Door.” Campion has processed and mixed each recording read by the artist, using Hart’s voice as an instrument that serves as the soundtrack to both the animation and the exhibition itself.

Music and software programming for the custom algorithmic sound engine by Edmund Campion, Director, Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, UC Berkeley. Original spoken voice recording by Claudia Hart. This piece utilizes the CNMAT “Resonators~” synthesis object designed by Adrian Freed. Special thanks to Jeremy Wagner and CNMAT for support with sound installation. Additional presentation support from NIIO and Barco.

The Ruins is live as a virtual exhibition for Mozilla Hubs, designed and supported by Matthew Gantt. It is featured in Ars Electronica’s 2020 festival hub, along with a video interview with Claudia Hart about the project by Jean Marie Offenbacher.

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