layered vision 2017-CHN/ENG sub ver. from Zeppra on Vimeo.

one-sentence description

A documentation of “the subject being isolated” in today’s image production streamline, and a discussion on the contemporary human/non-human relation.

一部由网页浏览体验拼剪而成的屏幕录像，关于今日世界视觉生产流水线中司空见惯的“独处的主体物”，及其背后的人类/非人之物关系的研讨。

longer description

A portrait-mode photo with a blurred background taking with the new iPhone, a polygon model of artifact being reestablished by a 3D scanner and its corresponding software, an actor performing in the front of a multi-story-high green screen - just to name a few elements of image production today. The formal similarity those cases displays is a detachment of several layers being categorized into foreground or background, subject or object, character or its environment. And this sorting and parting is not only formal, but semantic: it fells into the story of animated/unanimated, organic/inorganic, human/nonhuman dualism. Nowadays, we experience this detachment in an unprecedented scale. Being touched by the cultural instruments such as iPhone and Adobe Photoshop, as well as processed by institutions such as the animation studio’s streamline, the reality is sliced, rendered and reconstructed under a visual pattern, “layered vision” as I name.

iPhone 相机中的“人像模式”将人背后的景物自动虚化；3D扫描物体后生成的物件模型在预览软件中有如位于空旷的舞台之上；演员在数层楼高的绿幕前表演着——仅列举几例今日图像之社会生产车间中的场景。若考虑这些场景形式上的共同之处，则是其中诸个被分门别类为“前景/背景”、“主体/客体”、“角色/环境”的层次之间的清晰剥离——我们以前所未有的频度体验着的剥离。经由数字生产设备如iPhone、Adobe Photoshop软件的点化，脱胎于例如动画制作工作室的流水线这样的机构，现实被气氛、渲染、重整——遵从一种特定的，我称之为“分层视觉”的图式。

I see this pattern as a collective unconsciousness incarnated in the forms of blur, contour and other visual elements that overwhelms the content production realm, as a condition of image making and the state of presence of the image being created under this condition, and ultimately marks the inherent tendency of imagery in our age. Witnessing this condition, I hope to explore several examples of “layer” metaphors called into image production emerging in various disciplines. Utilizing seemly mundane desktop-recording, youtube tutorial style video essay, I try to document and make sense of these metaphors, examining their cultural suggestions, and give a testimony of the objects/subjects relations, as which are hierarchically arranged in the spectacle of the world theater.

我将这个认识理解为一种集体无意识，它赋形于模糊、轮廓以及其他统摄内容生产行业的视觉元素中。这种无意识是图像被生产出来，以及被生产出的图像（image）保持其存在的条件，并最终成为像（imagery）存在于我们这个时代的内在趋势。作为这个趋势的亲历者，我希望通过探索数个存在于不同图像生产行业中的“层次/舞台”隐喻的实例，运用基于屏幕录像剪辑的视频散文记录这些隐喻是如何发生作用的、又具有怎样的文化暗示，并最终为人类/非人物之间的关系作证——正是它们构成了井然有序的世界舞台之宏景。