While writing this review of Peter Luining's work 7.7°, I was listening to the radio, and a message was secreted to me from a far distant realm. Actually, I am under no illusions that it was an encrypted tenet especially for me, in fact it was very straight forward - although I am certain the radio segment meant a great deal more to me than most others who may have been listening. A presenter was talking about sacred medieval gardens and how the waterfall in this space, symbolised a phantom. Architecturally the waterfall is the central exhibit and is a symbol of the virtual phantom from where life flows. This garden was a sacred space, a zone out of time, and a place for one to connect with the evanescent qualities of life. One could use the garden as a retreat, but that is not what the garden was for. It was a place, to rediscover what the world ought to be like, and to project these atmospheres back out into the world.

Why does this relate to 7.7°? I found that 7.7° is the place where things slip, this net art not only takes you into the future, oddly enough, with a timeless kind of enthusiasm. It gives the feeling that you are one piece of an upscale physical process, working on an upper level of a vast network of pipes. To see it you must be part of the network.

It is also a dance, a kind of performance, because at times the cubes are terribly weak, like a fluttering, fading moth. There is an incredible radiance, a smiling with an inner glowing quality that is unique. But there is something ancient about these cubes, of course referring way back to the 6th centre chess board of 64 squares used for Shaturanga, borrowed from an earlier game called Ashtapada, a race game played in Ancient India. The moth-like quality, it's slight fluttering and the terribly feminine fragile quality that you find in kabuki theatre. Turbulence / sudden contrasts / black- out, black hair and fabric over white glowing skin, concentrated stillness and fast-forward flickering sequences.


Luining uses flash software, like a camera, producing grainy sounds, with elemental black and white, film like effects on the small framed net stage, revealing actions with textural variations, sometimes thin and stiff, too fast, not life-like, or else the image appears as if through a window, with small inexplicable, ambiguous gestures, but solid and three dimensional.