The characters in Summerbranch are inspired by Vera Lehndorff (Veruschka) and her work with Holger Trulzsch. Veruschka became famous in the a1960’s as a fashion model and began working with Trulzsch in 1970’s producing a series of works called Trans-Formations. Trulzsch photographed Veruschka's naked body painted to blend into an extraordinary series of backgrounds, her presence becoming a kind of ‘silent performance’. Trans- Formations was published as a wonderful book a stunning amalgamation of photography and body painting with an introduction written by Susan Sontag.

In the Summerbranch video installation the performers disappear into the background of each forestscape by remaining motionless and wearing ' ghille suits' a type of extreme camouflage worn by snipers.

'... it concerns the reappropriation of technology used for more militaristic means: yet despite it's faintly ominous imagery, Summerbranch conveys a sense of tranquility.' - PC Gamer (Jan 2006)

‘...Artists-eye-view on games: less gore, less score, more to explore..’
‘..transformed from its original bloody shoot-em-up massacre into something that transports you into an experience that leaves you feeling tranquil, cuddled and warmly loved by nature itself.’ - Lisa Devaney

The Summerbranch exhibition is the result of a 2 month residency in the New Forest.
Originally created for the Artsway gallery, the works have since stood alone as individual pieces. The works include a series of Virtual environments, a Video installation, a series of Lenticular prints and site specific Wall prints.

More images here: http://iglooartists.carbonmade.com
Read more about Summerbranch and see photos of 'the making of ' in the Summerbranch Blog

The Art of Simulation :
The permanent co-evolution of cryptic characteristics, or camouflage, and the ability to detect camouflage for what it is, a simulation of the real, forms the dramatic theatre of forest life. This dense eco system is delicately balanced between moments of visibility and invisibility - the dappled light on a leaf turns out to be a clever duplication created by a leaf insect. When the same leaf insect turns out to be a computer-generated simulation of the real thing, the interplay of encrypted layers reminds us of the problematic status attributed to fixed notions of reality. Igloo’s Summerbranch (2005/06), a simulation of the New Forest in Hampshire, England, performs a similar game of hide-and-seek with reality - following a Baudrillardian logic, the installation simulates the forest environment, throwing into jeopardy the category of the ‘originary’ by both propagating the precession of simulacra and subtly modifying the understanding of what the ‘originary’ could be (in this case, the notion of ‘nature’) - one can’t help but wonder what else is veiled or concealed in this forest.

Igloo’s appropriation of military camouflage techniques and a computer gaming engine, continue this play between the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’. As camouflage developed in response to aerial photography during the early Twentieth Century, it heralded the start of a new war paradigm, where beginnings and endings were destabilised, panoramas visually occluded and illusory, appearances susceptible to correction, identities made malleable. The playful, continually changing surface of Summerbranch gives legitimacy to Hillel Schwartz’s assertion that camouflage today cannot be conceived merely as a trompe l’oeil, rather it must be acknowledged “as central to the way we make peace as [well as] the way we conduct our wars”(1).

By prompting connections between simulation and camouflage, and providing civilian sympathies and applications for military practice, Summerbranch repositions critical themes of current cultural production. On reaching the edge of the installation, we come face to face with legacies of land (art) and the future of earthly habitats. Through simulating and reconfiguring representations of our environment it implicates itself in the continually changing narrative of nature and its parallel development with technology. Summerbranch brings to the foreground our politically-charged preoccupations with topological Interior and Exterior - the dialogue of reconciling a sophisticated, highly technologised world with competing narratives about the resources and uses of our environment.
(1) Hillel Schwarz, Culture of the Copy, Zone Books, New York, 1996 p.208.

Colm Lally & Cecilia Wee

Bottom L to R: Virtual environment installation view, Video installation, Wall print.

See a video of a talk by Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli on the Hidrazone Website here.

Other Igloo projects
Main igloo site