Continuization Loop

“Static/Continuization Loop” are two works by Wim Janssen about the phenomenon of television static. The same recognizable and commonly known image of television static is being generated through two completely different techniques. Not the image itself, but the way it is reconstructed and materialised, is the most important part of the Statics-series.Television static is not just an abstract image, but also a figurative one. It is in fact an artifact of technology, a physical phenomenon and unwanted by-product. It is recognizable as what it is, static, but also has a certain iconic meaning.

Wim Janssen tries to imitate and materialize static by means of an apparently slow and inefficient process.

In “Continuization Loop”, a single 35mm film loop is pulled up and down over more than 150 guiding wheels, creating a wall of film. The frames of this piece of film are only black or transparent. When the loop travels through the mechanism, the image of video static appears.
While film as a medium normally makes images appear through projection in combination with the transport of celluloid through a projector, Continuization Loop omits the projection and makes the image appear by means of the transport only.

The installation combines and imitates visual elements from three generations of visual media: the material aspect of film, the empty signal of video and the binary logic of digital. But at the same time the most important attributes of these media are absent: there is no construction of an illusory filmspace, there is no real video image and there are no computers involved.