fire_scape

Jorn Ebner is an artist based in Berlin. Born in Bremerhaven, Germany, he studied English Literature at Universitaet Hamburg 1990-95 and Fine Art in London at Central Saint Martins College of Art 1995-98. Since 2000 he has been working mainly working with digital media and production tools.

The work 'fire_scape' is a 4-panel wall installation, each staggered 5cm from the next. Images are top views of a digitally created landscape. The panel on the top right shows a fire that seems to come from the centre of the overall composition but is cut off at the bottom left of the panel. Each of the 4 images shows the landscape from a different distance. The software used—a landscape modelling software—creates imagery that suggests computer games, reality, and colour field painting at the same time. The fire in the centre is naturalistic. 'fire_scape' reflects its role as a work of art in the public realm by highlighting its artificiality, and also by incorporating strands of popular culture (computer gaming). It is a fragment, a small section, of what could be a larger electronic landscape that provides the background for an imaginary world. It may be a window onto the parallel existences that are flourishing in the ‘virtual’ realities.