Yolanda Li

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Blue Sky, Green Grass

Bliss is a real image taken of a real place. It is also one of the most viewed photographs in the world since it was bought by Microsoft and used as a screensaver. It is in this procession of Bliss, from a blue-sky-green-grass landscape, to a photograph titled Bliss, to a branding symbol for Microsoft, to today’s old-future aesthetic, that I wish to explore ‘longing’ and ‘melancholia’ as key emotions for our hyperreal contemporary. 

Through simulacrum, Bliss the reproduction, becomes the referent for blue sky green grass. One would often compare seeing blue sky green grass to ‘finding Window’s home-screen’. Bliss allows blue sky green grass to be eternal, perfect, and a portal to somewhere else. Somewhere to be, to end up. In this way, Bliss is an old dream but also an advertisement for where we must go and what we must desire. 

Through searching, constructing, and simulating Bliss or the most blue-sky-green-grass image, this body of work aims to capture a ‘blue-sky-green-grass feeling’. A desirable feeling against the perplexity of postmodern experience but also a feeling that is ultimately melancholic. I desire blue sky green grass as it offers me an exit out of reality through its perfect eternal qualities. However, I am melancholic in my desire as I realize Bliss is just another violent phantasm projected by our saturated systems. To escape reality, when reality and appearance continually collapse into each other, means I find myself to prefer blue sky green grass on banners, in screens, as reproductions.