Hans Verhaegen and Jean Delouvroy's "Deus Digitalis"

While searching through rhizome.org, I came across the art piece “Deus Digitalis”, an audio visual installation created by visual artist Hans Verhaegen and composer Jean Delouvroy, which spans the second floor of the Orpheus Institute concert hall.

Hans Verhaegen is a visual artist who studied both graphic arts and art history and since 1994 has been invited by several groups for both group and solo exhibitions. Regardless of the medium in which he is working, whether creating a painting, collage, installation, or drawing, his work seems to contain the connected element of the human figure. Coming together with Jean Delouvroy for the first time, the musician also explores different styles of music, including jazz, contemporary, electronic sounds, and the recycled use of his own acoustic material. Delouvroy composed music for the piece “Deus Digitalis” to create an installation, which stimulates two senses of the body.

The pattern in the visual is similar to that of a quilt, with detailed squares of moving bodies (25 each), using different colors, separated by bars of black. The colors are the default colors found in almost any graphics program and do well to simulate the “typical” gothic colors of the glass windows The animation is made using Flash and is inspired by another work of Verhaegen’s that was inspired by his approaching trip to see the new stain glass windows of the Cathedral in Koln titled “Gotiek”. That animation is a proposal of Hans’ for the Basilica of the Sacred Heart’s window, using a flat screen rather than windowpanes. The music is a 23-minute “looped soundscape” set to a very low frequency range. Finding little video or clips of the sound used, one site described it as sounding as if it were “a group of giants singing in slow-motion with an endless breath like they are frozen in time”. There is also a layer of crackling in the sound that appears and disappears, queuing the visuals to change.

By creating repetition in the shapes and using similar basic colors, the artist connects the quilt like squares to form the work as a whole. The use of the human form promotes a feeling of the collective whole and, when the music is added, a sense of the collective whole’s connection and/or sensitivity to the vibrations and awareness presented by music. The concept of the low hum of the music reminds me of religious and spiritual traditions of the chants of the Tibetan monks, something used to connect the individual to the collective energy and to focus the mind away from the self and towards an understanding of the community. The hum of the “giants” combined with the ever-moving human forms suggests the subliminal energy of the human connections that occur every day without ever being discussed. It is like the Taos Hum, a rumored low humming sound said to only be heard by young males who live in or come to the Taos region of New Mexico—realizing such a sound is as if to be presented with the idea that, although we are all moving separately, divided by space and time (black bars and movement qued by sound), the collective thought and energy of humankind may be heard or felt if one listens.

I find this artwork to be very successful, connecting the individual, community, and modern experiences of the digital with the commonality and shared connections of the human race. By using the digital media, specifically the older technology of Flash, I feel the artist connects not just the collective whole through visual and space but also through time, inferring the motions of the modern world, developing in technology and predictable patterns of the work world while also pin-pointing the starts of the digital arts beginnings.