Neo-Ice Angels and other impressions:

Ideas of resolution, performance and interactivity are explored from the outset of Harris’s practice. In Ice Angel (2012), a gridded matrix of lights are fragmented, hazy and of a pixelated low resolution. Lights that are temporarily imprinted on the backdrop disappear like fading memories of snow drops melting on the ground. Crucially, in this piece, the formation of the self is constructed through the perception of others.

Harris’s artwork lets the participant physically embody the form of an angel but yet never seeing themselves in the act. The experience has been designed with a ‘memory’, so that the characteristics of each set of wings is tied specifically to that person thus solidifying the feeling of a distinctive embodiment. As a child, the creation of snow angels and snowmen is rarely done for solitary reasons, the shadow left in the snow becomes a marker for others to witness the act of creation. So, a fundamental part of this expression is the requirement that others see it.

As philosopher George Berkley famously stated esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived).Harris’s work carries on an artistic tradition where rapid advances in technology allowed for new ways to experiment and for artists to harness this experimentation to produce new works of art that mixed learning and thought with aesthetic consideration.

The proliferation of cheap synthetic (tubed) paints gave, for example, the impressionists access to intense new colours and cheaper versions of colours that were either too expensive to use in large quantities or were not readily available prior. There were also great advances in scientific theories in the 19th Century which greatly influenced the artists of that era.

The French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul’s 1839 colour theory text De la loi du contraste simultanée des couleurs (translated as On The Law of Simultaneous Colour Contrast) was one of the first systematic studies of colour perception and greatly influenced the experiments of the impressionists and led to the development of Neo-Impressionism. This, coupled with American physicist Nicholas Ogden Rood’s theories of optical mixing (in which light that is mixed tends towards white as opposed to the mixing of pigments which become duller) leads us to a better overall understanding the development of contemporary artists that work with light as a medium.

It would be difficult to discuss the study of optical effects without mention of James Turrell and the work of a group of Californian artists known as Light and Space that focused on the interplay between light, architecture and perceptual phenomena. Turrell’s study of optical colour effects combined with his knowledge of architectural space are best represented by his Ganzfeld series. It is a work that is remarkable for its apparent lack of architectural depth and in which the viewer experiences a loss of depth of field.

Turrell’s Skyspace series, a specifically proportioned chamber with an aperture cut out of the ceiling and open to the sky and the work of the late Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Chromosaturation series (first conceived in 1965) are two exceptional examples of artworks that evoke Digital Shimmer (2015). Harris’s piece although more modest in scale, explores similar effects of subtle colour shifts and warping geometries on a more human rather than architectural scale. In so doing, the boundaries of the concentric circles start to gently shift, bringing to mind the interaction of celestial bodies and astrological phenomena, like the spirograph like conflagrations of John Whitney or the alluring spectral visual poetries of Jordan Belson’s Samadhi (1967).

Similar in its intentions, Shimmer (2013) a piece which explores the psychological effects of colour, light and optical effects using dichroic glass is a refreshingly simple sculpture that does not rely on electronic sensors. A simple movement, a change in viewpoint changes the colour of the glass.

Despite his signature work comprising high resolution images and screens, Harris’s practice often plays with differing scales of resolution and pixel densities. In traditional mediums, an artist typically defines scales of resolution through a mixture of material application (i.e. size of brushes, the smoothing of clay, the sculpting and sanding of lumps of wood or marble) or is forced to comply with the limits of a medium’s intrinsic material quality (the individual miniscule but granular particles of pigment in a watercolour wash, carbon in charcoal or the fine weave of the canvas.)

These minimum elements are just as diverse in Harris works, ranging from the individual pixels of a high resolution 4K screen, the melding of the photons output by light or the individual segments of a nixie tube as in his recent work from 2017, Simulated. In this work, the reputed phenomena of typoglycemia  is called into play so that the brain instinctively reads the “correct” words from the jumble of letters that periodically modify in the tubes, intermixing these notions of resolution and a capacity for the brain to find meaning in the chaos.

Unlike the carefully orchestrated slower paced work of Gerrard in which time lurches continuously forward, Harris’s works allow for human interference and more specifically, for a time-line that speeds up or slows down at the will of the viewer. Although these portals can be left alone to play by themselves as subtly shifting landscapes, and one can marvel at the detail of their design, Harris has incorporated the humour of video game culture in their construction (and subsequent destruction.) They are also loaded with “Easter Eggs”, a term originally derived from programming, where secret in-jokes or extras are activated with specific key presses or via fulfilling certain conditions.

In many ways, interacting with these works are reminiscent of the videogames genre known as god-games that began in the 1980’s. Games such as Bullfrog Productions’ Populous (1989) and Maxis’s Sim City (1989) allowed players the chance to act as an omnipotent being, able to shape the land and create a paradise for its inhabitants or wreak havoc and destruction on its populous, with comedic rather than consequential effect.

The enjoyment derived by interacting with these virtual deserts (a very literal take on the term sandbox) is at the forefront of their design. In this way, Harris’s works have more of an allegiance to these early experiences than contemporary living, breathing world systems such as the Grand Theft Auto series where acts of destruction and violence feel less innocent and more consequential. Perhaps this reflects on Harris’s own interest in representing the joy of life and living systems.