Influence, change and transformation are keywords in Peter Hagdahls ¦uvre. In 1992 Andréhn-Schiptjenko showed the installation Sustained where sculpture, painting, drawing, snapshots, paperclippings and a powerengine created a system ranging from global oil-trade to the failings of a presidents digestive system.
The possibility of visualizing change has continued to fascinate Hagdahl and today he uses new technology in his work on these issues. In a series of works he has developed computer-programmes that monitor different phenomena and translate them into constantly changing images. In the series Simulated Social Model (sensoric detection), currently on view at KIASMA, Helsinki, different aspects of an exterior reality manifest themselves as an abstract image in constant mutation.
The new work Nothing Remains the Same (Sensoric organ) continues this theme. Its focus is on everyday phenomena that constantly surround us: the news, the weather, the rates of the stock exchange, the presence of other people. These are measured by for this purpose specifically developed computer-programmes and translated into images on modified screens. All these values are compounded into an image of the state these phenomena create, a dreamlike abstraction projected on the gallery-wall
The flow of images created by the computer-generated information could be described as a form of datagram. Hagdahl has created three-dimensional models that are recreated by the flux of information. In the dreamy exchange between abstract patterns and remnants of figurative images one can see traces from our canon of art history as well as of the industrial genre-imagery that belongs to the animations industry. The work functions as a hypersensitive nervous organ, a perceptive system constantly under the influence of everything that surrounds us.
(source: www.peterhagdahl.net)