Distant Music Water Traffic
Distant Music Water Traffic
Signed Print
Julian Opie
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74 x 111cm, Edition of 40, Digital Print
Medium: Digital Print
Edition size: 40
Year: 2000
Size: H 74cm x W 111cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
Last Auction: September 2018
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Meaning & Analysis
Distant Music Water Traffic is part of a series of prints by Julian Opie called Eight Landscapes from 2000. Each image in the series was mounted with sound systems, playing the sounds described by the title or digital LED panels displaying the words of the title one by one. An additional version of Distant Music Water Traffic has been made with flashing lights.
Created from photographs taken by the artist, then scanned and altered digitally, this print is void of detail and simplified through the use of block flattened colour. Opie thus produces a generic image of the landscape that strikes a sense of familiarity within the viewer. Titling the images with descriptions of sounds he heard whilst taking the photographs, Opie explained "Things in my experience don’t look photographic. When I recall the things I did in a day, for example, it’s not as a series of photographs, high resolution pictures. It’s a series of images which resemble symbols and signs. It’s like another language."
In simplifying Distant Music Water Traffic from the original photograph, Opie both draws from his personal experience but depersonalises the image to allow the viewer to create their own unique interpretation. Much of Opie’s work has been compared to the digitally rendered landscapes of video games in the way that they mimic a simultaneously familiar yet otherworldly sphere.
