Adri Schokker
In his work Adri Schokker researches the impact of new digital image technologies on our society, the way in which digital images determine communication, and how the images generated by these technologies influence our notion of what is real.Adri Schokker is interested in how people use their mobile phones to record a wide range of events in their daily lives. This shift in use is accompanied by a shift in intention. Images such as photos exposing the dead body of Gaddafi, to 'selfies' on Instagram, wander around the internet unchecked. They spread themselves through algorithms and are selected and put into a context in order to finally appear on our computer screens.
In addition to this endless stream of images generated by people, there is an endless stream of images created by machines, which are programmed and work with automation. For computers, photographs are merely a dataset; a source to analyze with specialized software that subsequently trigger an action. Computer vision machines infiltrate our private sphere unnoticed, analyzing us and our environment, continuously.
These algorithmic images appear increasingly in a journalistic context, such as satellite images in news broadcasts, cockpit videos from a combat helicopter, and hurricane Sandy filmed with witnesses' mobile phones. How do these new images influence our daily lives and which reality do they represent?
In his installations Adri Schokker isolates these images from their medium and their context. The works are never finished, and by making use of innocent game play, the spectator is seduced to contribute to the work. It is a process that asks for a new dialogue with the digital image.
