Simone Hoàng's latest project is called ‘Movie Star’. She is intrigued by concepts such as conditioning and conventions, and this time she investigates this using green screens and screensavers. A background looks like a kind of wallpaper, we don't pay attention to it, but it still conveys its own message. Does such a background also have its own identity? And if you bring the background to the front, what will the message be then?//In Movie Star, Hoàng works with the technique of chroma keying, i.e. green screens. If I have myself photographed in front of a green screen, I can fill in the background with a photo of Aruba or Den Helder, and when I post it it looks like I'm on vacation there. A green screen like this is about dissolving time and place. I find such a photo from Aruba or Den Helder in the stock collections. The computer also offers these standard solutions for placing a screen saver.//A photo of a patch of grass with dandelions, taken during the last walk with my youngest sister, appears on my screen. But the most commonly used screensaver is not your own photo, but a stock photo of Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California. A kind of holiday paradise. A desire contained in a collective visual language. Simone Hoàng took this image to mix it with the colours of chroma keying (green and blue) and transformed the background into a stand-alone abstract image. She even makes a 3D print of it.//Technology allows us to fly through time, but does it make it more true? A mirage, an unreal world. What do we dream of?//Text by Art Historian Hanne Hagenaars (https://www.hannehagenaars.nl/).
