Artwork presentation

2 minutos 45 segundos de excusa

Artist: Belén Becerra

Year 2021

Semester First semester

Fecha July 1, 2021

Moving image, with gray lines and curves, that maintains its mutability for 2 minutes 45 seconds and then repeats the sequence.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

The moving image is made with different data, such as variables, functions and formulas with arithmetic operators, all written and processed in the p5.js editor program. Primitive figures are lines, which vary their position, size, border and color. The scale, rotation and translation transformations are given by the functions scale(); rotate() and translate(). These functions were combined within “layers” with push() and pop() to isolate the effects of the figures. To perform sinusoidal and circular movements, the sine function: sin() was used. This same function, together with map(), (a function that converts ranges of values, in this case sine values, to a scale of gray values), allows the constant color change in the background and in certain lines.

Starting from images or oscillons, as Ben F. Laposky properly names, and other works such as those of Herbert W. Franke, this moving image emerges that emulates drawings similar to those of said authors. I particularly refer to the work of Ben Laposky: Oscillon.

Laposky took photographs of moving signals that were projected on the screen of an oscilloscope. In my case, I gave motion to the still image.

But the main idea of this work is time. The time that the viewer can stay observing. Therefore, the work is an excuse, a pretext, as Nathalie Heinich said, “an activator of actions” (1). In this case, the excuse is to sustain attention to the image, and then the work is completed with the action and sensation of whoever observes it. So, this work is, above all, an idea: observation over time and its consequences.

“Is there anything more immaterial than an idea?”; “The work, free of any material form, turns out to be only sensation” (2).

Although we are facing a sensory, intangible image, we can say that it has form. In fact, it takes on shapes, shapes that each observer can find or lose…

And there is something else, and that is that as I built the image and its movement, I also created a story. Would it be possible for history to fill time that could be considered empty with meaning?

“The visual arts tend to be entities not only of space, but also of time, if only because of their dependence on the story that gives them life” (3).

A void is then generated in me. Can I pretend to hold my idea of time? Or do I need to put a safety net in front of the viewer by telling a story about what, I hope, they choose to contemplate for almost three minutes?

This emptiness led me to a work by Robert Raushenberg, “Erased De Kooning Drawing”. A note about his work describes: “A blank piece of paper, in principle without artistic value, if the viewer does not have all the information…”. (4) In another note, it says: “…without the inscription we would have no idea what is in the frame, the piece would be indescribable.” (5).

The analyzes and comments on Rauschenberg’s work highlight the need for a context, a prior story or to understand “the rules of the game” (6), as Heinich also said in relation to the understanding of contemporary art. And it probably is, but in this case the excuse of time to generate the experience wins. Because artists are not only authors but producers of “subjects of experience” (7), subjects in which we also become, as José Luis Brea said, because works mutate when experienced by others, so we rediscover them. And speaking of the consequences of the works, I quote Brea again when saying that the productions, in addition to experiences, generate an imbalance in logic and an imaginary in the viewer, an imaginary for which we must be responsible and assume from the narrative, the media and the situational.

Now, this work could also be considered as gray lines moving on a gray background, and claim only that literality, as William John Thomas Mitchell mentions in “Ut Pictura Theoria. Abstract painting and language”, when talking about the idea of the canvas and the painting itself, and recounting his son’s vision when seeing Malevich’s painting: Red Square and Black Square, where the boy described the painting with a phrase: “There is a small red square inclined below a larger black square” (8). In short, this work could be what you see, period.

But I remain with my first intention of holding an image mutating over time, and inciting the viewer to live the simple experience of observing. As another note on Rauschenberg’s “White Paintings” says, “the power of the paintings lies in the attention they require from the viewer, asking us to slow down…” (9).

So, let the time of this work be our ally to observe, make up a story, and slow down.

References, quotes:

1, 2, 3, 6 Nathalie Heinich, “The work beyond the object” (2014)

4 De Kooning drawing erased, Fulwood Lampkin, 11-24-2017: https://historia-arte.com/obras/dibujo-de-de-kooning-borrado

5 Erased de Kooning drawing, by Sarah Roberts, July 2013: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.298/essay/erased-de-kooning-drawing/

7 José Luis Brea, “Redefinition of artistic practices s21” (2008):

8W. J. T Mitchell, “Ut Pictura Theoria. Abstract painting and language” (1994):

White Painting [three panels], 1951, by Sarah Roberts, July 2013:

https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.308.A-C/

Biography

p5.js transformations: https://www.atamvirtual.com.ar/mod/page/view.php?id=4870

p5.js movements: https://www.atamvirtual.com.ar/mod/page/view.php?id=4872