Decoy, by Jane Prophet, is a screen based digital work reflecting on the politics of landscape, construction and ownership. Drawing on works by painters such as Gainsborough and Poussin as well as the creations of landscape designers Humphry Repton and “Capability” Brown, Decoy consists of a series of animated digital “paintings”, displayed on plasma-screens, in which subtly evolving fractal landscapes are combined with photographic images of the views of the grounds of various country houses.

This quintessentially English, Arcadian vista has entered the popular imagination as an embodiment of Nature and the Natural, yet it is almost entirely artificial in its construction. By combining these vistas with evolving simulated landscapes, Prophet unearths the artificiality of each landscape’s past, either by returning the setting to a closer approximation of “wild” nature, or by allowing the viewer to project ahead into the future, according to different growth and planting patterns.

The painterly texture of these sequences, allied to their presentation on a new generation of flat plasma screens, alludes to an English landscape tradition of the picturesque and the sublime, whilst highlighting the capacity of digital technology to create a vision of a landscape entirely under human control.

Conductor was a site specific installation made in response to Wapping Hydraulic Pumping Station and commissioned for the opening of the building as a gallery and restaurant in October 2000. The work remained in situ for 6 months. Wapping Hydraulic Power Station is the kind of large mechanical system that invoked the technological sublime lauded by the world fairs. Some of the machinery is gone and the vast underground network of 186 miles of pipes that crossed London carrying water under pressure have always been out of sight, but in Conductor they are reanimated. Electro luminescent cables allude to the fibre optics fired along the matrix of pipes when Mercury Communications took it over. Stepping into the Boiler House, from the Link Hallway, into the darkness split with lines of green light, the cables reflected in 74 tonnes of water appear to continue forever. Burke notes that while darkness is sublime, “a quick transition from darkness to light” produces an effect on the mind that is even more powerful.

120 electro-luminescent cables form a 3D grid through the space and accentuate the scale and perspective. The Coal Store at the back of the room is gently lit from within and glows. These photographs were produced using 10-minute exposures: the piece was very dark and depended on the viewer gradually acclimatising to the light, seeing more as the minutes went by. The two black ’stripes’ left and right are 2 of the 4 large pillars in the centre of the Boiler Room. Many people ‘read’ these as corridors or recesses as opposed to 3D objects.

Every 30 minutes a ripple emanated from the Coal Store, disrupting the reflected lines that seemed to go on forever. The ground plane of the water was revealed as the ripples bread towards the viewer and the sense of vertigo diminished. It took 15 minutes for the ripples to subside and the water to become a reflecting pool. It stayed still for 15 minutes before the next ripple began.

Works in Progress:

Net Work - A floating installation made of buoys supporting marine lanterns that display bright lights. The lights change colour to represent a system of cells from inside the human body. The R&D for the form of this art work was conducted by a large collaborative group, as part of an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant as part of the Design for the 21st Century scheme. Also see www.interdisciplinary.co.uk.

Big Plastic Tree (working title) - The English oak as emblem of the State. This is a development in a series of works which I have undertaken which consider our shifting perception of ‘the natural’ versus ‘the artificial’. The blurring of boundaries between these two states causes a reevaluation of self, nature and nation state. The tree form will be made using mathematical data developed from fractal mathematics to produce a 3D object. Playing with our sense of expectation and material - using a material with qualities we associate with small objects (toys and safety signs) to make a large object that will simultaneously signify nature and technology.

What scope is there for taking 3D data generated by fractal mathematics and producing complex 3D objects from it using Rapid Prototyping technology to explore a new sense of the sublime? I aim to make a life size simulated English oak tree, cut from 3D Data of a fractal tree developed via programming. A tree made from this data to be produced ‘life size out of luminous plastic that glows in the dark. In the daytime it is a subtle object, clearly ‘modelled’ and geometric. At night it is more magical and surprising as it glows. Over time the glow fades until it is again a plain plastic colour by dawn.

Artist Statement