MEDIA DIGITAL ART AND CULTURE IN FLANDERS BELGIUM - BAM

J E R R Y G A L L E
º 1969, A N T W E R P
A Kloosterstraat 5
9 860 Moortsele
M +32 (0)496 894 799
E jerry.galle@
hogent.be
W fuzzylogic.be
Jerry Galle’s work is concerned with the tricky
relationship between contemporary culture and
digital technology. Using recent software and digital
images in an unconventional way, he addresses
the role of technology in everyday life and in the
creation of art. His work explores how technological
imagery brings about new meanings. For Galle,
technological images resemble life: they can be
geometric or symbolic, playful or dead serious. That their meaning is unstable
and wavering triggers a feeling of doubt about what we are seeing, uncertain
whether it is an expression of a machine or of a human being and whether the
image is artificial or a representation of something that really happened. This
doubt has a major role in much of Galle’s work - cf. the binary system of the
computer, i.e. the ‘1’ and ‘0’, the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ of our present-day technology. In
a society in which hesitation is considered an unproductive quality, technology
and its compulsive efficiency have a pervasive effect on social behavior.
But when doubt is applied to computer systems, strange things happen: the
resulting images become less ‘perfect’ and gain in poetry, playfulness, and
meaning. While in his videos, drawings and prints the hesitation can be seen
in the image itself, in his generative works the hesitation is directly injected
into the operating system of the computer. Self-written software causes the
machine to doubt. What we see is the hidden life of images in a machine, for the
processes that usually happen at the inside of the computer are brought to the
surface of the screen.
5 1
Double Yes (2009)
Mixed media
installation