Simon Biggs
«Alchemy: An Installation»

«Alchemy» is a digitally illuminated «Book of Hours», twenty-four pages in length. It is designed to be played on two video monitors, turned on their sides and arranged in a book format, each screen becoming a page of the ‹book.› The playback technology used is Laser Disc with interactive hardware and software, allowing the ‹reader› to turn the pages back or forth, as they desire, with a simple wave of the hand.
Unlike a traditional book, but not too dissimilar to an illuminated medieval manuscript, the light by which one reads emanates from the pages, illuminating not only the text and images contained therein but the immediate environment. Also the miniatures that illustrate the text are in constant motion, the detailed images of demons, angels and beasts, interiors and exteriors dancing before the reader's eyes in mesmeric rhythms.
«Alchemy» is based upon two texts. The first, on the right-hand pages, is derived from original alchemical recipes in the search of the Philosopher's Stone. The second text, on the left-hand pages, is a pseudo-academic treatise from a future Century, which describes a history of science and alchemy prior to the ‹Great Semantic Wars.› Perhaps science fiction or comic history, it reflects on the economy and politics of knowledge in relation to both ancient and modern ideologies and methods.
The creatures, figures and patterns that inhabit its grotesque but comic space are hybrids deriving from a convoluted and confused genealogy of medieval and modern visions of the world and human condition. Mutations occur across historical, scientific and artistic divides which call in to question the nature of such distinctions.

Simon Biggs