TOMÁŠ MORAVANSKÝ

AND THEN THE OBJECT HIT ME (NAPADOL MA OBJEKT)

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DIY CGI, temporary public installations, posters

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2020

Brno

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Artist: Tomáš Moravanský

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During the coronavirus second wave, one of the Czech protective measures was a 9 pm curfew. Should anyone violate the curfew, they would be imposed with a fine. This measure did not cover walking one’s pet within 500 meters of their place of residence. My friend, who works in a wholesale company I shall not name, told me that with the beginning of these measures, they got about 2000 individual online orders for electronic toy dogs.

 

Walking the electronic or the stuffed animals was not clearly specified in the government decree (remained unsaid). Police did not fine people walking toy animals, just warned the person or called upon them to return home. I witnessed such a situation once.

 

My temporary installations are set to the surroundings of urban settlements and inner courtyards. Cuboid in shape, they depict a famous dog from TV, from a musical film Annie (1982). The movie is about a little girl dreaming of a life outside her orphanage who “adopts” a stray dog, calls him Sandy, and to say “the dog will always be there for her” would be a massive understatement. For nostalgia’s sake, you can see the movie, which has been remade several times, on a popular streaming platform of Amazon. The cuboid covered with portraits of Sandy refers to 3D computer graphic programmes. The default of such programme (e. g. Blender) is always a clear cube representing the base object in a “landscape” of the grid, in a virtual vacuum designed to be transformed, textured, modelled.

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I draw attention to such places by bill-posting leaflets which resemble Lost Pet Advertisements, and they are supposed to be a quasi-compensation for posters advertising non-occurring cultural events. Instead of “Lost dog” or “Found dog” it says “Napadol ma objekt” which translates as “And then the object hit me” and can be interpreted in two ways: either “the object struck me” or “I’ve got an idea of an object”.

 

Note: CGI professionals delete the default cube as quickly as possible, considering it just an annoying element of running up the programme. The mere process of deleting the cube has become an internet meme.