Mike Phillips Lecture + Exhibition Opening

Opening March 7
Lecture @ 2pm
Exhibition Openings: 5-7pm
Location: Lecture @ UCLA Broad Art Center, room 5240, Exhibition @ CNSI Gallery

Exposure is an exhibition of work by Mike Phillips, Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts, School of Art & Media at Plymouth University. Mike Phillips is director of i-DAT, a Principal Supervisor for the Planetary Collegium and a supervisor of the Transtechnology Research Groups. His R&D orbits digital architectures and transmedia publishing, and is manifest in a series of ‘Operating Systems’ to dynamically manifest ‘data’ as experience in order to enhance perspectives on a complex world. The year that Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection was the same year Fujifilm moved from film production to beauty products1. This did not just mark a technological shift from film grain to nanoparticles but also a massive cultural shift - a shift from capturing the face on film to the embedding of ‘film’ in the face. The thing that once froze the face in an eternal youthful smile is now the anti-aging nanoparticle that preserves the face we wear. Barthes described the face on film as representing “a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced”2. Now this absolute state is closer to hand and we will walk around wearing our old photo albums as our face, peeling away the frames like layers of dead skin. Our essence, like Garbo’s, will not degrade or deteriorate. ‘Viewed as a transition’ Exposure explores the deterioration of the flesh through the temporality of the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). From the 60th of a second exposure of the Kodak Brownie camera to the 20-minute scan of the AFM - the closer the subject the longer the ‘exposure’. Incorporating data from an AFM scan of a basal cell carcinoma Exposure explores the convergence of ideologies constructed around imaging technologies. Through a subtle interaction the viewer conjures up a dynamic data/image of a skin cancer - over exposed to the sun - or the intense light of the camera flashgun.