Static

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.

Lightwaves, besides their frequency and amplitude, also have an orientation. Polarization filter only lets light pass in one such orientation. When you look through a piece of this filter, it’s perfectly transparent, just a bit darker than normal plexi or glass. When you look through the filter at an other piece of this same material, rotated 90°, the second piece becomes an opaque black surface because the light passed through the first filter can’t pass through the second filter. Every other orientation gives a different degree of opacity.

For Static, this material was cut into small rectangles of one cm2, in random orientations – like large pixels. These little squares are put between two large rectangular pieces of plexiglass (189 × 2412 cm). The screen looks like a slightly darkened window. In the exhibition space a slowly rotating disc of the same material is also placed. When the screen is seen through this disc, it changes into a half transparent field of video noise. White noise created, purely by the manipulation of light.