Dan Webb

︎ @Dan.W.Webb

︎  Dan Webb CGI
︎ DanWebb789@gmail.com

The domestic space, a place we may call our shelter, where we can escape the surveillance obsessed world outside. As described by writer Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space: “The house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace”, it is also considered “our corner of the world”, where we call home. With inspiration from artists who have explored domestic spaces using different mediums, my focus has transitioned from documentary to philosophy, with a conceptual approach. Looking into the technicalities of a digital photograph, I have been trying to recreate this appearance, in the form of computer-generated imagery.

In the words of French philosopher and writer Jean Baudrillard, from his book Simulacra and Simulation, he refers to the word simulacrum which is “something having merely the form and appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities”. Thus, relating to my concept of reproducing real scenes around my household, rendered with vignette, chromatic aberration, lens distortion and depth of field, to mimic the “proper qualities” produced by a camera. With this illusionistic imagery, you could then argue: why is this imagery not real? If it looks real, is of the real and has people convinced (on first glance) that it is a photograph, then it must be deemed real.