Nicolas Sassoon, the Vancouver-based French digital artist, Computers Club member, and w-a-l-l-p-a-p-e-r-s.net co-founder, has just released the second edition of his ongoing digital studio project, Pandora. Entitled Second Studio Visit, the work is a digital depiction of a fictional studio space. Where the first chapter offered an environment filled with GIF versions of his own artworks, the follow-up portrays a fictional world in which his studio is host to an illegal growing operation.
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Hosted on Opening Times, an online not-for-profit digital arts platform, Second Studio Visit explores the dichotomy between real and virtual worlds through simple graphics and glowing animations. “This series is an opportunity to project invented scenarios in my real environment, which is something quite new for me. My work usually doesn't refer to an exact location, it can be site-specific as an installation but it tends to be self-referential,” Sassoon told The Creators Project. “This new direction allows me to articulate my surroundings with some of the fantasized elements contained in my work.”
Using the browser as a canvas and the GIF as a medium allowed Sassoon the ability to generate and experiment with new narratives. When describing GIFs, the artist simply stated that the format let him “inject performative qualities inside images, and infuse them with a sort of life-form.” Inside the unique isometric experience, the user is invited to scroll, discover and explore the multitude of meticulous details found in the large animated environment. “There are questions of scale inherent to the experience of screen-based works online that I find very important. An image that extends beyond the screen involves an exploration from the viewer, it also conveys a different temporality and a form of monumentality,” Sassoon went on.
When asked about the meaning of this second iteration, Sassoon first explained that the vision is purely imaginary, as opposed to the first studio visit which depicted a “closer-to-reality” scenario where the artist drew his studio and artworks more candidly. For this second work, “I researched what is commonly used to create a grow-op and tried to represent it “realistically” in an animation. Growing Cannabis is quite common in BC, a lot of people live from it legally and illegally. It crossed my mind before that it could be an alternative to sustain an art practice, so the GIF is just a release of that thought.”
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Head to Pandora to explore Sassoon's Second Studio Visit.
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Hosted on Opening Times, an online not-for-profit digital arts platform, Second Studio Visit explores the dichotomy between real and virtual worlds through simple graphics and glowing animations. “This series is an opportunity to project invented scenarios in my real environment, which is something quite new for me. My work usually doesn't refer to an exact location, it can be site-specific as an installation but it tends to be self-referential,” Sassoon told The Creators Project. “This new direction allows me to articulate my surroundings with some of the fantasized elements contained in my work.”
Using the browser as a canvas and the GIF as a medium allowed Sassoon the ability to generate and experiment with new narratives. When describing GIFs, the artist simply stated that the format let him “inject performative qualities inside images, and infuse them with a sort of life-form.” Inside the unique isometric experience, the user is invited to scroll, discover and explore the multitude of meticulous details found in the large animated environment. “There are questions of scale inherent to the experience of screen-based works online that I find very important. An image that extends beyond the screen involves an exploration from the viewer, it also conveys a different temporality and a form of monumentality,” Sassoon went on.
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