

PROJECT:
WORKSHOP
JUNE 2021
ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART
Fading Planes
WORKSHOP
JUNE 2021
ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART
The aim of this workshop is to drive participants into an imagined physicallity of the digital event of fading airplanes and to gather their sensations and descriptions. A series of fading airplanes are shown alongside the reading of three excerpts:
1- Airport and airplanes, a selection of texts from Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, by Marc Augé.
2- A deleuzian gaze, a reflection on Francis Bacon: The logics of sensation, by Gilles Deleuze (read here).
3- A one-way gaze of superiors onto inferiors, passages from In Free Fall, by Hito Steyerl.
There is a specific playlist in the background, each track is paired with a perceived and subjective ambient of the reading.
Playlist:
Intro -Holly Herndon, FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, DOUBT
1 - Aphex Twin, STONE IN FOCUS
2 - Holly Herndon, BODY SOUND
3 - Burial, GHOST HARDWARE
Closing - Holly Herndon, FADE
Some reflextions from the participants of the workshop Unfading Fading Planes:
This overlapping aircraft gave me a feeling of overlapping time and space. I modified this satellite image, hoping that the aircraft and the people in it would return to their original positions. However, even if I fixed it arbitrarily, it was not the original but another copied object, so I reversed the colours of the parts so that they could be further distinguished.
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These pictures reminded me of our world of multiverse and layers. Especially, the container, spectrum of light, light and darkness of these aircraft show that its existence is momentarily separated into several layers.
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The aircraft we can see here has already lost its original image somewhere, leaving only three-dimensional traces intact. It's pretty much gone, but I doubt it ever existed. This might be occurred by a systematic error or intended camouflage, but its existence has been trapped between digital and real-world gaps.
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What I felt while I searched for these pictures was that the identity of the aircraft replace passengers' identity while it was in operation with them. Especially when we see an aircraft, we look at the machine rather than the passengers. Passengers becoming a part of machines and stay together until they are out of service. I served as a naval aviation engineer and was involved in a number of flight plans every day. Once, a helicopter crashed into the sea during the night operation, and all colleagues in the heli have died on duty. Considering all of these, when we see fragmented images of aircraft in digitalise maps such as Google Maps, we may agonise between viewed as a value that contains personalities or just a target. This can also be related to the objectification of personalities that occur through the screen in today's digitalised world. And the exploration seems to have significance consider virtual and real worlds will change immersive in the future.


INTRODUCTION
Listening to Holly Herndon’s A.I. collaborative piece ‘Fear, uncertainty, doubt’:
I need to know where we stand, oh, I
I need to know why you turn to sand
Wherever I go my, my heart breaks and erodes
How is it all that I see now?
I need to know why
I need to belong, to belong
I'm coming undone, undone now
Why, why is that all I saw in you?
Is there nothing above you?
Below you is sand, and I

FADING PLANE (JOHANNA ŁAłOWSKA)

FADING PLANE (JIHO KIM)
Algy Falconer, Maartje Koch, Joanna Łałowska, Jiho Kim.
