Origin


'Daniel Lee Daniel Lee

Origin was a series of manipulated photo images and animation created in 1999. It describes human evolution based on my own imagination. I suggest that there were ten stages in human evolution, from the fish form (as Coelacanth) and then transformed to the reptile, monkey and human …
My motivation came from the up coming millennium. The new millennium (year of 00) reminds me the grand beginning of everything. My concept started a few months after the New York Times Magazine gave me the opportunity to create a self-portrait which applied to a special technology issue in 1997. I made a sequence of four portraits which showed our past as monkeys and our future in perspective. To push it further, I supposed that all the mammals, the reptiles and even the fishes were all related to us originally.
The original exhibition was installed in a sequence of 12 pieces 37.5 x 50 inches digital outputted photographs along with a 5 minute computer animation at O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York (1999). The 5 minute animation has been also presented in “Cyber 99” at CCB Center in Lisbon, Taipei Gallery in New York. A recent version, made for a DVD, 16:9 wide-screen presentation, was presented in “Metamorphing” at the Science Museum, London (2002–03), the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003), the Taipei Art Fair 2004 and the “Metamorphosis” at J.M. Kohler Art Center, Wisconsin (2004). The 12 pieces print in sequence was included in “Exposed” at the Städtische Museen Heilbronn, Germany (2004).