Oculus
Oculus
People have long feared eyes glowing from out of the dark. They mean an unknown beast: sitting, waiting, preparing to attack. The LED indicates the status: on / off, but also, for example, asleep, in standby … Ready for action. These are everyone: in the tram stop sign, on the screens, in the Christmas decorations and on mobile devices. Urban jungle beasts, tamed, responding to our command. When I turn on my laptop, I wake it from sleep. An eye, green or yellow, lights up and I hear breath. Inhuman, like an eternal touch to which the intensity changes. It exhales at my command. Sometimes I let it rest for a while. Then it winks at me. When I turn it off in the evening, I unplug it. Otherwise, the red eye would glow in the dark. Hostile, warning. Ready to attack. The eye of the terminator.It is said that eyes are a window to the soul. They are a portal, a place in between. They communicate, they express, they are a natural focus of communication. They mediate direct contact, which is lost when viewed elsewhere. The green color is accessible, it says Go! It is natural, a symbol of nature. However, there is something unnatural on the green diode, it is too intense, artificial. However, still accessible. A green portal to another world. Go!
Kristýna Lutzová graduated from the Secondary Industrial School of Stonemasonry and Sculpture in Hořice v Podkrkonoší, then joined the Intermedial Confrontation studio under the direction of Jiří David at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. In her third year, she moved to the Supermedia Studio run by Federico Díaz. In 2012, she went on a semester internship to Dublin at the National College of Art and Design, Media Department. She also works as a stone restorer. Kristýn has long been interested in the architecture of the Internet, its abstract and ornamental elements. Already in 2010 she transformed virtual visual characters into real objects in the work Datamodel, two years later in the project www.loginlogout.cz the imaginary boundaries between the “real” and the real disappeared. In her diploma thesis “Re: Symbol” (2014) she worked with the transfer of basic iconographic symbols of social networks to the historical exhibition space of a monument building. Her approach thus shifted from a fascination with virtual architectural elements to their historical and cultural contexts, and thus became a media archeological in fact. Recently, she co-founded Kurzor_kolektiv, which in the Braincandy project explores the topic of layered communication, the culture of busyness and the “world in your pocket” using the form of a second recording. Every month, the team organizes one-night exhibitions in the Kurzor_gallery space.
Curator: Kateřina Cepáková