1988
(5 negatives)
for Athena International
From Hags book ‘How Things Are’
‘Nothing much exists but energy. If you remove the spaces from a humans atoms then what is left, actual substance, mass, would fit on a pin head. Mass only accounts for 0.01% of what we can sense, (i.e. see, hear, smell and feel.) The rest – 99.99% is energy. This is the energy that is released when a nuclear bomb explodes, a bit of a big bang. The fuel that powers the sun and allows us to survive. What our brain perceives as things – stuff – tables, chairs, the smell of freshly baked bread, sunsets, fire and water, hot and cold, are the subtle fluctuations and movements of energy.’
Hag digitally colourised four of his pictures; Genesis, Stupidity of Man, Storm in a Teacup and Rock & Roll. for the first digital imaging exhibition ‘Machine Dreams’ at The Photographers Gallery London UK in 1989.
A ‘Sci Tex High End Digital Image Manipulation System’ was used at Studio 10 London to create these for the first digital imaging exhibition ‘Machine Dreams’ at The Photographers Gallery London UK in 1989.
The whole system and associated hardware, drum scanners, half inch tape readers/recorders, monitors & output onto large format colour transparency film up to 16 x 12 inches with a digital laser printer cost around £1 million in the early 1980’s, about £3.5 million in 2024.
Of course this pales to insignificance compared to what today’s computers are capable of at a small fraction of the cost. We can have it in our pocket. Here we stand at the dawn of AI imaging making most of this stuff redundant including knowledge, understanding and truth.
It appears that reality is becoming starkly individual.
Are we approaching a time where we no longer have a common shared reality? This has always been true in the sense that we all have differing lives in differing circumstances which we interpret through our individual filters and necessities. Now it seems the fundamentals of that reality is blatantly being distorted.
The camera does not lie has never been true.
This tinted version is not found in the book ‘How Things Are’
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Original image created by Hag without the use of a computer by Combination printing.
Collage Montage Surreal Photography.
