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ART EXHIBIT
Voight-Kampff
Venue: UCA Gallery, 46 Lower Main Rd, Observatory. Tel: (021)
447 4132.
Gallery Hours: Tue - Fri: 10:00am - 5:00pm; Sat: 9:00am - 1:00pm
Duration: 29 Jul - 21 Aug 2009
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Voight-Kampff at UCA Gallery, curated by Catherine Ocholla,
will feature works by Shani Nel, David Scadden, Justin Allart, Niklas
Wittenberg, Catherine Ocholla, Linda Stupart and Andrew Lamprecht.
Philip K. Dick introduced the Voight-Kampff Empathy Test to
the environs of post-World War Terminus in Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep (the book behind Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner). The test
would measure involuntary responses in subjects (blushing, respiration,
eye tension) to emotionally evocative questions to detect whether they
were human or android.
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Curatorially, Catherine Ocholla has opted to explore the
concept behind the test (real/fake; fantasy/fiction; empathy; violence or
its potential, etc.) through a selection of works in various media that
use visual cues that ‘normally’ elicit certain kinds of reactions. From
butterflies to bullets, seeming opposites masquerade and provoke new
responses or narratives from the viewer, some expected and easily conveyed
and some less so. The show plays into the current revival of interest in
Sci-Fi and fantasy – references and individual works hint at the narrative
in both the movie and book – tying in to long-held assumptions of art and
science’s influences on and association with civilization and high
culture, and the representation of alternate realities in art
(particularly how empathy, as suggested by visual cues, tie in with these
influences or lie in their representation).
The show’s centre piece (a collaborative installation) taps
into how society has numbed us to the horrors around us to the degree that
we have, to some extent, become indistinguishable from androids (based on
aspects of the narrative in the actual book).
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