MICHAEL PERL
TOOLTIPS
A tooltip is commonly known as a hint or helpful note, contextualizing functions of software for the user when needed. The series „tooltips“ is an inversion of this principle by showing the underlying techniques used to build, generate and manipulate imagery. Where a common tooltip helps to display and explain the technical aspects of a graphical user interface, „tooltips“ displays the technical aspects as they are, suggesting a microscopic view of techniques buried beneath everyday digital infrastructure.
Suggesting a continuation from the artists earlier works, „tooltips“ deepens the examination of algorithmic visual output. In contrast to „Kaizo“ (2020), a work that observes a distorted and blurred tourist vista, the algorithms of „tooltips“ warps the imagery beyond recognition. „Shift“ (2019) deals in photographic glitch errors, whereas „tooltips“ evokes patterns of technical nature: The underlying algorithms of basic digital functions such as storing, cashing, rotating and loading information are the subject of these images.
Furthermore, the work offers a nostalgic reading by connecting to a bygone era of pixelated non-retina resolutions, linking and embedding techniques back to the origins of computer theory and thereby highlighting its universality.
The images here are unrecognizable, a kinship is established via patterns created from transmission errors: a known process leads to familiar results; and not unlike siblings, some images emerge sharing characteristics, others do not. The spectrum ranges from black sheep who stand out from within the series to relatives who cannot deny their similarity. Individual blocks act like clusters that repeat themselves. Generative beauty blossoms in exchange for a partial loss of control. This trade invites a variety of readings: stamp impressions, spiritual totems, knitting patterns, machines possessed by ghosts, wallpaper, mystical runes, labyrinths, the flickers of ancient tube televisions or building blocks from old arcade games.
Can we read this as a tooltip from within the ‘machine’? Are we being communicated to? Or instead, are the viewer’s interpretations the tooltips of tooltips?
Exhibition duration: 06.10 - 24.11.2023
