GiG Munich is pleased to present the new video work – Cosmetic.wished.explorer – by Jenny Dunseath, done specifically for the upcoming ‘On Repeat’ show.
Cosmetic.wished.explorer (2018)
Digital film embedded in GIG website for duration of the show.
Duration: 25 seconds
The film cosmetic.wished.explorer raises questions and discussion about the nature of authorship, appropriation, language and interpretation, exposing categories of truth and error. It is a palimpsest of presentations, and positions. Using the advances of current technology, perhaps this is a version of Spatium, the cosmic analogue of the Idea and the mechanism of abstract relations becoming actualised?
The film was made using Google Translate’s instant camera translation app. The app is designed to translate text from signs, handwritten notes, printed menus etc. by just pointing your camera. But what happens if it is used to ‘translate’ non-textual information?
When pointed at buildings (with no text to decipher) the app attempted to ‘translate’ the building in front of it and revealed a magical quality by virtue of its translation of nothing into a different time and place. The unpredictable effect of producing deciphered gibberish revealed a unique series of language constructs.
The title refers to the 3-word location of the filmed building. The 3 words generated from what3words is a new simple method used to describe global locations. In it, the world has been divided into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and each one assigned a unique 3-word address. It proposes that the system enables anyone can accurately find any location and share it more quickly, easily and with less ambiguity than any other system. It uses grid and language to reveal, classify and order.
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