In Ariana's Elbow, an artwork by Seth Price (Jerusalem, Israel, 1973), the reflection on material data passes through a process of scale change and decontextualization of the digital image. In particular, a detail of a subject's elbow skin is dramatically enlarged, exploiting the very high resolution of the source image obtained through a photographic objective usually employed in medical research. Close observation leads to an intimate level of proximity; nonetheless, the decontextualized picture eliminates the global perception of the subject as a person. The viewer, faced with the unimaginable quantity of data offered by technology, is stuck between the produced images and their own perceptive limits.
Seth Price