The mapping of human vision has been a recurring theme in the work of the internationally acclaimed new media artist Tamás Waliczky. The spatial representation of time, futuristic renderings of augmented reality, and the examination of optical distortions have all played central roles in his works.

Over the past two centuries, the invention of various picture-recording devices has shaped our ways of seeing, thereby manipulating our image of the world, in much the same way, indeed, that computers manipulate ways of seeing. Waliczky’s exhibition Imaginary Cameras reverses this relationship, demonstrating how, when an inventor creates a new device, his or her worldview often predetermines the mechanism of the apparatus and the character of the images the device can create. Waliczky’s 23 precisely constructed fantasy machines (cameras, projectors, viewers) reveal with their analogue mechanisms alternative renderings of reality while at the same time they dissolve the opposition between seeing and knowing, computer vision and human vision. The designs and mechanics of the devices make specific references to cameras of earlier periods. The limitations inherent in these mechanisms, including elements of unpredictability (in contrast to the over-controlled, over-developed instant imaging systems of today), have a liberating effect on the artist. With his fictional cameras, Waliczky does not seek to create a seemingly plausible virtual reality. Rather, he calls attention to the existence of different ways of seeing.

The designs of the cameras, which operate on analogue principles and which were made with digital software, are displayed in 23 lightboxes. In addition to these static renderings, animations and an interactive digital installation present the ways in which these devices, which could in fact be constructed, would operate. As for the kinds of pictures his fantasy cameras would produce, the artist entrusts this to the beholder’s imagination.

– Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszák, curator

“As a new media artist, I am very much interested in these cameras and the possible alternative ways in which they function, as the roots of new media art.”

– Tamás Waliczky, artist

Tamás Waliczky (1959) is a new media artist who began working with computers in 1983 and published The Manifesto of Computer Art in 1989. He has worked at various institutions known for their programs in new media art, including the ZKM Institute for Visual Media in Karlsruhe; since 2010, he has been a professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His works have been shown at important exhibition venues, such as the ICC Gallery Tokyo and the Multimediale Karlsruhe, and they are also found in prominent public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest.