Installation Focuses On The Bond Between Photographers And Their Cameras

With his new series of installations Mnetractoscope, Montreal-based American artist Tyson Parks tests the limits of perception and human understanding--starting with a name.

Squint at Eastern Bloc, photo EmilyGan.

“Mnetractoscope is a name that I invented using Greek and Latin root words that roughly translates to ‘a viewer that draws from memory.’ I’ve used this naming scheme to contextualize these works within the scientific domain and as an homage to the 19th century devices that inspired this series,” says Parks.

Parks’ new series plunges viewers into a creative universe that is constantly in flux, one that alternates between concrete and virtual elements. Using new technology, he explores visual perception and tries to better understand human sensory functions. He also awakens new approaches to spatial perspective and visual communication.

Squint, the first part of Parks’ Mnetractoscope series, was developed last winter while the artists was in residence at the Eastern Bloc. Since last week, he’s been presenting a revisited version at the PFOAC221 Gallery in Montreal.

“Squint is a meditation on the inexorable relationship between camera technology and personal visual experience.  I hope that the piece inspires self-reflection and new dialogues about how this relationship influences us both individually in everyday life as well as universally in our expanded understanding of existence, perception, and human intelligence,” says Parks.

Mnetractoscope is composed of several elements that interact with one another. At the center lies a reproduction of a digital single-lens reflex camera. Placed on a rotating plinth, the camera’s physical form is distorted and its elements rearranged to look as though it is subject to the forces of the rotation. A second, identical DSRL camera captures the movement of the single-lens camera, relaying the images in real-time via a computer.

The images are treated by a software that Parks developed using Cycling74's Max, then projected onto a surface that Parks calls the ‘transformative mirror.’ After being fed through Parks’ software, the image of the distorted camera spinning on a splint is rearranged to that of a normal, intact camera, correcting the physical distortion. Parks’ game is a subtle one, questioning human perception and the ontology of objects, rectifying the physical through the visual.

Squint at PFOAC221, photo Ian Cameron.

Parks developed his coding/decoding process in 2011, while working on Spun, a series of digital photographs generated through a similar process. In inhabiting the ambiguous visual world of Parks’ installations, viewers work to reconcile the reality of physical objects--the distorted camera--with their visual representation--the reconstituted camera. As he watches the camera virtually regain its physical wholeness, the viewer experiences an abstraction of his or her own.

Parks project isn’t over yet. Looking forward to the next step, he talks of expanding his reflection.

“I am developing a number of projects for the Mnetractoscope series, but am not sure which will be completed next. Given the opportunity I'd like to expand the scale and context of this series by creating works that interrogate sculpture and architecture in public space through expanded techniques of visual transformation through motion and live camera software,” says Parks.

If you can make it to Montreal, the exhibition is on view until the 21th december at the PFOAC221 gallery.

Squint @PFOAC221 Gallery, 2013 courtesy of Tyson Parks.