Text: Nathalie Houtermans (Cell Foundation Rotterdam)
Exhibition set-up: Dan Oki
Black and white animations and metamorphoses of virtual hybrid animals are emitted from the monitor and projected in the darkened room. Computer prints of the immobile portraits of these being are on the wall, next to them, slides are projected. Invented new names (Eaglecroc, Merlinryn, Eleseacow etc) are morphing into surreal beings for which these names were invented. Media installations consisting of video/computer, slides, virtual sculpture/photography and sound, are set in two rooms.
"...Dan Oki is not one of the scientists who occupies himself with artifical life but an artist, although the dividing line between these two disciplines is increasingly difficult to draw. Via computer manipulation he generates images of both mythological hybrids - constructions bulilt from parts of beings from our physical world - and a hybrids of the future. After all, it must be possible (or it is already?) to creat a hybrid from a totally different species, right down from the cellular level. Inevitably curiosity arises concerning the possible behaviour of these beings: how could they survive, virtually or materially? Will this remain a fable?"
Nathalie Houtermans
Dan Oki (Slobodan Jokić, 1965, Zadar/Croatia). From 1991 to 1993 studies Film/Video at De Vrije Academie in Hague/Holland, prof. Frans Zwartjes class. 1996 - Ma in Art at the postgraduate studies at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem/Holland. He attended postgraduate studies in film directing and screenwriting at the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam/Holland. Since 1998 teaches Video art at the Academy od Fine Arts in Split.
