Johnnie Ziyang Zheng

: : 野馬也，塵埃也，生物之以息相吹也。天之蒼蒼，其正色邪？其遠而無所至極邪？其視下也，亦若是則已矣。且夫水之積也不厚，則其負大舟也無力。覆杯水於坳堂之上，則芥為之舟；置杯焉則膠，水淺而舟大也。

: : 大道泛兮，其可左右。萬物恃之而生而不辭，功成不名有，衣養萬物而不為主，常無欲，可名於小；萬物歸焉而不為主，可名為大。以其終不自為大，故能成其大。

: : 視之不見名曰夷，聽之不聞名曰希，搏之不得名曰微。此三者不可致詰，故混而為一。其上不皦，其下不昧。繩繩不可名，復歸於無物，是謂無狀之狀，無物之象。是謂惚恍。迎之不見其首，隨之不見其後。執古之道，以御今之有，能知古始，是謂道紀。 

Photography, as a de facto bystander, and in most cases, as the sole carrier of the meaning of commemoration, has participated in the recording of most events since 1839, but has never been in it, just like human being learned to commemorate the passing of affairs. Human being consume a lot of extra energy to create an object, but the meaning of the object itself is no longer associated with the original commemoration of the passing affair. The excessive abuse of photography and images is also causing the disappearance of information and correlation. What should have been important is gradually corrupted into cyber space like noise and dirt. So how to propose a new form of experiment? Perhaps we should return to Cueva de las Manos[1] 10000 years ago. Photography, the substantive behavior in the process of commemoration, may also be able to directly participate but not just become a surface separated from the event. Perhaps the original information recorded in the image is also isolated and appears irrelevant, the focus point as a common memory has never been attached to it. Therefore, I gave 25 4x5 films to others as we farewelled, and I opened them all for one second at the same time for exposure, then I directly placed the 25 exposed images on the scintillation device to illuminate and play in sequence in one second. The entire device is directly involved in the continuous restoration of the whole event. The speed of 25 frames per second also refers to the Phase Alteration Line[2], which is the most important method of television broadcasting other than static photos for public events. The continuous consumption of luminous energy is also a reminder of the existence of this incident, in the form of direct commemoration.

 [1]The rock paintings of Los Manos are located in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina, and date back 1,000 to 10,000 years ago. Los Manos means "hand hole", Los Manos is the name of "hand hole", taken from the carved image of the hand in the cave. [2]PAL TV standard, 25 frames per second, TV scanning line is 625 lines, odd field first, even field behind, the standard resolution of standard digital PAL TV is 720*576, 24-bit color depth, picture aspect is 4:3, and the PAL TV standard is used in China and some European countries and regions.

Sense of nothingness and ridiculous:

This work maybe is actually a joke which performed through a meaningless repeating action by colouring 1000 foam bricks and a nonsense photograph outcome: which is how we actually produce materials and how do we letting hilarious, simple photograph-visual thing take the first place.

I chose seven photos of the river outside my home, which represents the minimal cycle for settlement, seven days a week, and did an online search. Then I mixed my photos with similar image sources found online (which come from social platform, photo galleries, official sites, etc.) and further blurred the images. After the semantics generated by the images are abused and the subject of experience and viewing is reversed, the memories and thoughts of this river are also diluted in the process of replacing actual memories and emotional connections with algorithms and data. We have never had so many identical pictures, conceptually or factually. Therefore, the preciously recorded personally images are ironically, behovely diminished like waves merged into sea, the same way my hometown disappeared into the tide of the era. Everything we want to keep privately through images is no longer recordable or existent. Together with the memories and emotions of others, it turned into noise-like data, and disappeared in the sea of data.

However Prometheus empowered us to burn, yet we are only obsessed with the bonfire and the shadow in the cave. Images, as the waxy face of the deceased[1] , as the extension and reflection of the obsession[2], has been worshipped as eternity since the shape of the rock pile[3] was gazed in silence for a long time in the Paleolithic Age. I divided my work into three main bodies and separate references to form the overall structure, which serves as the expression of the gazing history and specific conditions. The mobile phone which mimics the gazing of the swinging shadow in the fire, the acrylic bricks which is printed with personal and public images covered by the red layer and the RGB color separate, the TV screen (using real-time projection) which displays the delayed scene of gazing and the real-time scene of happening simultaneously, respectively refers to the shadow of bonfire in Plato's cave theory (Allegory of the Cave), the object watching the images, and the rock pile from the Paleolithic Age. It could also refer to the almost identical recorded images in the unclear meaning of viewing (visually just the red and colored bricks with difference, while the text information is almost unreadable), the restoration of the materiality of the images seen (the red light in the darkroom first seen after the black and white photo is developed, the picture on the colored-screen occurred with the RGB principle), and the linear time model of the overall history of the future from when the viewing began till now till eternity[4]. Ironically, even at this moment, the viewing subject is turned into the mobile phone, and the first viewer becomes the translator of codes, from screen(the phone) to screen(the TV which mirror sreening ). Yet we are still watching silently, just as we were obsessed with the fire on the cave wall and the appearance of things.

[1] According to Regis Debray's "The Life and Death of Images", "the birth of images is partly linked to death. The reason why ancient images emerge from the tomb is precisely to reject nothingness and continue life. Shaping the body is to control fear. Therefore, as death gradually fades out of social life, the image becomes less vivid, and our need for images is less urgent." In Latin "Imago" originally meant a wax mold for the face of the deceased. The judge took it to the funeral, stored it at home, and placed it in an alcove or storage shelf in the atrium. The religion at that time was based on worshiping ancestors, and therefore required the ancestors to survive in the form of images. [3]Tombs began to appear in the late Paleolithic period, about 100,000 years ago. In 1908, a well-preserved Neanderthal tomb was found in a small cave in a cave in southwestern France, with intentionally placed stones next to the human bone. This tomb dates back to the Paleolithic age approximately 60,000 years ago. (This tomb is one of the earliest human tombs. Neanderthals are the first ancient humans to adopt the form of tombs with funerary objects, and have a funeral view of equal life and death.) [4]The linear time model here refers to the model called Minkowski's space-time time-understanding in physics: it was proposed by the German mathematician H. Minkowski in order to meet the needs of the special theory of relativity. In the classical concept of space-time, time and space is separate, the model of real space is a three-dimensional Euclidean space, while time is a one-dimensional number axis, and the simultaneity of the two events is absolute. [2]Susan Sontag's quotation of the cave metaphor in "On Photography": "We are still hanging around in the caves Plato said without progress. What makes us deeply indulged is still only some photos, not the facts themselves."