2021 ZOOM GALLERY STUDIES Final 36x 22

Lydia Eccles, Test Human ~ Universal Aliens · 2021-02-25T00:00:00Z

ZOOM GALLERY STUDIES   Ink, 36" x 22"  11/24/20-2/25/21 In November I began drawing on Zoom. I hadn't drawn in a long time. I resisted Zoom. When I first did it out of such loneliness, I was put off seeing people right in my face, often with cameras pointing up their nostrils, stubble, etc. But what a relief to use my hands, do something tangible. I've never understood nostrils, or lips, or eyes. They are in huge close-up for me to examine as I could never do in person, liberated for a time from mousing and typing.   Meant to be wandered through in close-up detail, exploring the image to actual scale of drawings. I have been surprised at how a face sometimes emerges out of scribbles and no defining lines.  Drawing on Zoom, not consciously paying attention since I am supposed to be listening, quick because images are transient (mostly speaker-view though occasionally pinning someone), my drawing is more intuitive.   Why are there so many men?   My drawings seem to have more sense of humanity than the digital photo representation I'm looking at.   Me, a real person, looked at transmitted pixel patterns of a distant analogue person. I transformed flickering pixels into a durable real thing. Redigitized, retransmitted, you see it now again pixelated, at a great distance. You are a real person. All my work is done in the role of Test Human Participant-Observer for Universal Aliens: Salvage Ethnography [recording of the folklore and practices of social-economic formations on the brink of extinction]. Bygone instruments of daily life [in this case Zoom] possess the same  importance for the investigation of extinct economic formations as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. Please see Universal Aliens Catalogue for archives library contents and Universal Aliens Resume for concise history.   Contact Lydia Eccles, Test Human/Universal Aliens at: UniversalAliens@hotmail.com PO 832, Norwich, VT 05055 USA   Culture shock: The strange becomes familiar, the familiar becomes strange