infrarrojo cercano

It is through photography that we become aware of what we see (Michatowska, 2015), as is the case in Tanit Plana's series Infrarrojo cercano [Nearby Infrared], 2018, which depicts the information that a fibre-optic cable carries in its serpentine body and spits out from its mouth. The technique can be described as "painting with light"; however, the source is not a simple torch but the data carried by an internet cable at light-speed in an analogical medium. According to the artist, this process has enabled her to reach the essence of the matter: leaving a physical trace of the liquid information that flows through the circuitry, using an analogue photographic body that has weight and a set of dimensions. The medium is at least part of the message, if we want to stress, for the thousandth time, McLuhan's well-known aphorism.

This struggle between the virtual and the tangible reality, and the obsession to grasp, to find and to show "the Internet", is also present in the work of some other artists such as Mario Santamaria and Ingrid Burrington. Just like Plana, they too belong to new generation of artists, most of whom were raised "between the end of the analogue media era and the beginning of the age of ubiquitous digital quantification", and their work explores the vast network of infrastructures that wire the planet we inhabit: not only communication networks but also the intricate mesh of systems that are increasingly responsible for uncountable aspects of our lives, from global trade logistics to scientific observation, from social media to police activity or waste management.

Moritz Neumüller
Automated and networked images (fragment)
Photography, Representation and Social Justice, Routledge, 2023.

collection of 12 images

Exhibited at Sala Canal de Isabel II, Madrid. 2019