Mark TITCHNER: Ivy Meet Mike (2007)
Mark Titchner’s “Ivy Meet Mike” is a kaleidoscopic video animation of footage of the first hydrogen bomb experiment, code-named Ivy Mike. What sounds like a computer-generated voice repeats ‘yes’ in rapid succession, so that the one syllable become a rhythmic chant with no beginning or end. It suggests the robotic embrace of fission and an acquiescence to the strong will of a technology that, for a time, embodied the “free world’s” darkest visions of apocalypse and sublimated fantasies of omnipotence.
Oddly psychedelic, the work’s aesthetic recalls an arcane vision of the future: on the one hand, it is obsolete technophile aesthetics in motion; on the other, with its irregular pulsing it appears organic at the same time.
Mark TITCHNER, born 1973 in Luton, England, will open a solo show at Peres Projects Berlin November 1st, 2008.