A Study of Flame and Fire

A Study of Flame and Fire simply explores the variety of flame and fire on Google images. Though previous non-digital works of mine have looked at fire as a spiritual metaphor and utilized my own unique, abstracted perception of fire, this study looks at a popular search engine’s perception of fire. I chose fire because it is an idea that I have been working with and I wanted to utilize appropriation to explore a popular, visual perception of that idea. This process has enabled me explore the continually changing aspect of flame, the uniqueness of a photograph and how that changes online, and the idea of the watermark. One reasons fire intrigues me is its relentless variation and transformation. The images in this video barely skim the surface in exploring the infinite possibilities of capturing flame on film (or digital rendering). The uniqueness of a photograph, capturing a fragment of this infinity also intrigues me, as does the irony of how many of these images have been re-rendered or previously appropriated. This brings up the idea of the watermark (emphasized through repetition in this video)—people have posted these images on the web, but still wanting to claim them for their own, overlay the image with a mark.