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Ville Lenkkeri
January, 2010
Making this series of photographs I have been concerned with the notion of our contemporary ways of defining the world using simulation. We have built a layer of simulation in between the real and the observer in order to condense the incomprehensible mountain of information coming at us from reality. This layer of simulation and illusion consequently produces a vast amount of knowledge, which is inevitably divorced from its origins. We learn to know what, but often not to comprehend why. The border between the objective of knowledge and the subjective act of comprehension has grown obscure. It is necessary to know but often unnecessary to understand the correlation between the cause and effect, the sequence of reasons, the origin and appearance. The way we see the world is more and more based on mental images that stem from simulated and reproduced experiences. Artifice and description are replacing the comprehension once gained from subjective direct experiences.
Dioramas – illusory views that combine two- and three-dimensional materials – are still viewed as skillfully constructed pedagogical objects, not for surrogates for unreconstructable reality. Nowadays, virtual illusions and simulations are used to describe the real almost forgetting the presence of the representation. The truth of simulation is however always separate from the origin it mimics, but as such, an interesting phenomenon for its constructed character. To study simulation’s truth is to study one’s self. By means of simulation we can shape our surroundings, our visions of the world and create experiences to suit us – we are able to make the world rational and thus understandable.
My approach to our simulation-shaped way of reforming reality is not entirely critical. I am interested in human activity and its aspirations.
- Ville Lenkkeri