Intro to Carnal Observation: Through a Glass Darkly


Hieronymus Bosch's artistic vision exists at a magical cusp point between biblical allegory and popular imagination. His work impacts on a visceral level. By today's standards he would, no doubt, be considered a religious fanatic, lost in the throes of an ecstatic belief in the bible. I have wanted to sample and animate Bosch's imagery for a long time. What prevented me was Bosch's "fanaticism." Not that I'm an atheist, not that I don't "believe." It's just that for me words like "belief" must remain encased in metaphorical quotation marks. Thus I "believe" there are profound truths to be discovered in the Christian bible, as well as in the sacred works of other religions, and also in ancient/classical mythology; yet if an artist today wishes to understand what makes modern society tick emotionally and intellectually, he/she must look toward pop culture. More specifically, in terms of understanding why/how icons reverberate, one cannot grasp the intricacies without studying pop icons, which is why I created Carnal Observation: Through a Glass Darkly in conjunction with Carnal Configuration: Honing an Erotic Paradigm. While the core image of Carnal Observation: Through a Glass Darkly was sampled from a portion of the hell panel of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, the core image of Carnal Configuration: Honing an Erotic Paradigm came from Urkel, a modern artist who established a reputation creating erotic imagery inspired by low-budget 1950s horror films. The Urkel animation opened the door to approaching Bosch and the Bosch animation brought the Urkel animation into mythological relief. I realized that in his fashion Bosch was working in the horror genre; really, he is a master of the horror genre. It is the main purpose of Carnal Observation: Through a Glass Darkly to illustrate how subtly imbued Bosch's imagery is with a dark mystery verging on surrealism, reminiscent of our wildest nightmares. Carnal Observation: Through a Glass Darkly is a highly textured animation composed of 512 frames. It lasts approximately 2 minutes and 15 seconds, then loops. A high-speed Internet connection is required and I recommend using Firefox as your browser. Even with a high-speed connection, initially the animation may run at a jagged rate. What I have learned from posting highly textured animations in the Digital Hallucinations section of Illumination Gallery is that such animations often need to play through once before running at their proper rate. I do apologize for this inconvenience, but I feel it is necessary to constantly stretch the boundaries of the web as a medium.


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