Collision Level

In the age of digital stratification, nuance can become a commodity, it is rare it would seem, to find in the forums, comments and streaming services of the internet, an opinion that extends beyond rigid binaries. “Collision Level” by Corinna Berndt exhibiting St Heliers street store & gallery, achieves the impartiality lacking in so much of our tech-centric discourse and catalogues all aspects of our digital relationships. The space; dimly lit by screens and directional lights, echoes the clatter of an adjoining bakery as artificial images pulse from a projected screen on the far wall. The physical space itself seems to represent the perspective of a phone, oppressively black, a podium, screen or print offer rectangles of sky blue, giving the impression of peering not into but out of a screen, as flashes or instances of reality are seen through a digitally distorted lens. Collages of Corinna’s own digital footprint (composed of forgotten images from her own phone archive) flash on the projection: Aesthetically pleasing images flash in a slideshow at an off-putting pace, capturing the high velocity digital media we consume on the regular. Berndt’s work occupies, if not the uncanny valley, a place very near, as the commonplace and naturalistic: a tree-line, a heartbeat or a poem are filtered and diluted through a paraphernalia of devices such as a screen, an image or headphones, creating an amalgamation of the natural and unnatural; the child of our digital relationships. The result testifies to what we (however unknowingly) commit to our devices in return for their many benefits. “Collision Level” explores how we interact, how we love and how we remember via our phones and how this lens distorts these endeavours. I spoke with Berndt during my visit, remarking on our own experiences with and without technology we were drawn to the inescapable emotionality of devices. Unlike a television, a camera or radio - a phone represents those with which we communicate, those with which we want to communicate. For though a valuable resource for factfinding, documenting, discovering, viewing and listening the most desirable, the most quintessential element of our phones remains the human response, the emotional gratification of a like or a text. When I look at my phone it ceases to be a glossy monolith and instead becomes a placeholder for my partner, my family or my friends. That emotional substitution is echoed in “Collision Level”, but instead of using faces or models to emulate these figures Berndt cleverly uses more universal images and motifs with which we all feel some form of emotional connection. Make no mistake this exhibition is no indictment of mobile phones or technology, neither is it a celebration, it is simply a glimpse at the lens through which we view others and ourselves, distortions and all. Words by John Thompson Images: Andrew Curtis