ELIF AYITER
These are things that I made a long time ago, that as time passed I threw overboard. However, I do not yet have the heart to say goodbye to them altogether, so I have placed them on a raft that is floating alongside before its contents will get discarded forever at some point.
The Nev Cats: A series of sort-of-cubist interiors with cats which I made in 1998 for a friend of mine, Haldun Dostoğlu, who is the owner of Galeri Nev in Istanbul - hence Nev Cats. He had this idea that some of the things that I was producing on the computer could be turned into silk screen editions. In the event the project did not materialize since the trial prints did not live up to our joint expectations, but I still kind of like the old critters cavorting around among the foliage. ;-).
The panorama above was a render of a landscape that I made in Bryce (a software that no one seems to talk about anymore) in 2002. It is called Citrinitas, which is also the name of my old website, and it is about Alchemy and Jungian psychology - these being things that I was sort of interested in back then.
2 OLD FLIPBOOKS
I made the flipbook called entre loup et chien while I was working on a PhD update in 2006. I was reading Freud, especially in relation to jokes and the unconscious, and from that I remembered something my uncle had said to me when I was very young - "entre loup et chien." I know that the correct saying of this sentence is "entre chien et loup" but he said it the other way around, and so this is how I kept it.
I am addicted to crime fiction, and especially police procedurals. I have so many of them that I can go back and read them from the beginning when I complete the cycle. And, of course, I keep adding, since there is no shortage of procedural writers out there. So, at one point, over 15 years ago, I decided to stage my own crime and create my own murder book.
The above image is called Rorschach, and it investigates facial symmetry - the face under investigation being my own. This was made over 15 years ago, so I hasten to say that these days I no longer look anything like this - *sigh*... ;-)
The Virtual Calendar is a series of images that I made in 1997 in photoshop with a wacom tablet. These images are based upon the storm days of the Turkish Farmer's Almanac, and the series is dedicated to my late aunt Fatoş Kuru, who was the one who made us all love the storm days. Click image above to view.
THE PALACE PROJECT
The Topkapı Palace in Istanbul was built over centuries, with replicating modules that created constructs which assimilated into a cohesive whole even though they were built by different architects at different times. The palace was used as an example whereby rhizomatic architectures were investigated in 2006 during one of my PhD research updates at the Planetary Collegium,
CAiiA Hub.
THE BRIDGE PROJECT
The aim of this project was to visually demonstrate my personal understanding of the evolution of the computer generated "image work" by means of a free associative process that utilized the search and query mechanisms of the internet. I made this in Spring 2006, again for a PhD research update session at the CAiiA hub of the Planetary Collegium. Later that summer the Bridge was also presented at Siggraph as part of the sketches program.
THE REPRESENTATION AND NAVIGATION OF COMPLEX DATA
The representation and navigation of Complex Data was a collaborative 3D project between myself, Yacov Sharir, Selim Balcısoy, Murat Germen and Selçuk Artut. We presented the project at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference in Tucson, Arizona at the University of Arizona in 2006.
ENTOMOPHOBIA __________
My skeleton is concealed by my flesh.
Their flesh is their skeleton, the exoskeleton. It is unconcealed, on the outside.
I have bones, they have segments.
My skeleton will surface in death, I will become insectlike.
They live in dark, moist places. So, one day will I.
They are cold, untouchable. So will I be.
They have no lungs, no arteries... They don't breathe like I do.
Neither, one day, will I.
Someday, somewhere death awaits me. I will become insectlike.
I will live on.
The final, untold, unmentionable 5th phase of the opus.
Will my soul be made to witness the final transformation:
As bone metamorphoses to segment, skeleton to integument?
The Goth Epic was a rather ambitious project where I wanted to combine contemporary Goth poetry with Renaissance paintings. Like so many other things I never completed it, but some of the images I made are finished, so here they are in the gallery above.
