Inertial Frames of Reference
I am interested in what happens when you lift a frame of reference and place it elsewhere. What it sees along the way and how you pass through around or towards new frames of references.
Inertial Frames of Reference was a concept project built upon the idea that nonlocality does not have to mean nonphysical. Our lives are made up of physical experiences, but we “make our minds up” about ourselves, and the world, as a direct result of subject-object oriented ontologies.
But I think we are made back in a way that disproves cartesian dualism, as the predominant narrative of our lives— a type of fictional discourse if you will. Not false, but not rooted in current ‘nows’ and urgencies that implicate us as characters in narratives that are not entirely of our choosing.
IFOR toys with quantum nonlocality as being able to be ‘picked up and lifted’ elsewhere, as we often do with our current understanding of mathematics, namely real numbers, as they pertain to quantum systems.
The observer effect has long been understood to be an anomaly of observation, rather than an implication of what I call witness.
Within witness we hold our own internal faiths and beliefs about the world, and when we ‘testify’ (make our witness known) — we need frames of reference to orient ourselves within the places we dwell.
In Barcelona in 2023 for Les Muses contemporary art festival, I choose the picture frame as an essential element to suspend ‘belief’ as an object-oriented ontology. The frames acted as my limitation and starting point for framing a number of timed exposures of light in intervals related to heartbeats.
Each exposure, ranging from 9-1 seconds was timed to be taken ‘in between heartbeats.’
The last piece of the exhibition is the device in which you read this through.
Special thanks to @ashwanarts at BienCuarado New Contemporary Art Gallery, in Barcelona for material support and Tania Hirte and Lorena Kirchen for curatorial support.
Presented for Les Muses 2023
Inertial Frames of Reference a Concept Project by Jay Watson - 2023 - (reclaimed wood, expired photographic paper, light, and fishing line)
