Will Duke’s recent work makes use of third order simulacra technologies, science fiction and real scenes in a nightmarish and yet sometimes hopeful combination.
‘Zone’ (2006) is a three channel, computer generated animation of an existing play park in a housing estate in Glasgow. The artificial lucidity of the rendering and notions of the precession of the model are brought to bear on the reality of the vandalism and decay of the site.
Built for an age of hope, for children of the future, the objects in the swing park; a slide, a see-saw, a bench, continually construct themselves, disappear back into the ground and then reappear again in an endless cycle of regeneration, only their scars seem built into the blueprints.
A dizzying, circling ‘camera’ action disorientates the viewer amongst the screens, which are set out to match the real positions of the objects in the park. The experience is one where one is able to see, but as if not there, as if removed from one’s body, like someone out of their head in a play park, unable to face the reality of now, and unable to dream of a better future.
But humans do dream, and dreaming involves a mixture of reality and fancy, a positive combination at play in the margins of Duke’s work.
© Iain Hetherington 2007