ON PHONES

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ON PHONES by the German artist Franziska Ostermann is a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection between physicality and virtuality. The work captures a figure lying on phones, where subtle movements signify life, challenging the notion of stillness and mortality. Ostermann blurs the boundaries between the living body and its virtual representation, inviting viewers to reflect on the nature of existence in a digital age.

In an undefined, digitally composed room, a photographic figure is situated as if lying on phones. On closer inspection, movements emanating from the figure can be discerned: a flexing of the knuckles, a blink of the eyes, a slight turn of the feet, an arch of breathing. These movements refer to a living body. In the physical act of keeping still, they are the ones that inevitably lead the endeavor ad absurdum. Only death separates the living from these signifiers of life. The life-bound state of complete stillness is unattainable. Through photography, the body can pass that threshold. Becoming a photograph, the body gives its mobility and its three-dimensionality to the medium.

"The captured position of the body appears extended to infinity in the photograph. Like a sequence of a single, constantly duplicated image. The signifiers of life have left the body with the formation of the image. I synthesize these movements that photography retains and lead them back to the transformed body in the process of digital animation. Virtual and physical corporeality, living body and virtual physicality, merge. The breaks in keeping still, the small motions, become the focal point of the work and place it in a context between photography and moving images, nature and artificiality, physicality and virtuality." – Franziska Ostermann

Contract address: 0x2f6cf50ee446a66295949604805da38554813da8
Token Standard: ERC-721
Blockchain: Ethereum
Metadata: Frozen and decentralized