Bokeh

Real-time software (Processing)
2014

Bokeh is the a Japanese name for a specific photographic effect that occurs when light sources are out of focus.

They are a by-product of using physical cameras and lenses in the real-world, but here the effect is simulated with code.

Like light leaks and lens flare (once considered unprofessional) bokeh is now part of the modern cinematographer’s stylistic palette and can lend romance, magical realism, or nostalgia to a scene.

Bokeh (2014) is a code-based, generative artwork that creates and exports digital images resembling the bokeh effect.

Here, without a subject in the foreground, the effect itself becomes the subject of each image, changing its usual role in visual culture and moving it to centre stage.

What do you see, in these portraits of bokeh? Flat circles, some blurry, arranged like an abstract painting?

Or are your eyes, like mine, compelled to resolve these images into lively scenes, and fleeting moments? Snapshots of hazy memories, just out of view. (Whose memories?)