127.0.0.1

127.0.0.1 takes its name from the Localhost IP address, commonly referenced “home” as it corresponds to the (physical) computer we are on. After a year and a half of confinements, distance, covered faces, and the consequent forced advance of the mediatization of interpersonal relationships, our own bond with our devices has intensified significantly. The work presents an elastic framework that comes to life with an out-of-phase breath, a breath that is, in turn, contained by the very limits in which it is located, either on the sides, or in the useless attempt to escape into the perspective of the horizon while, when passing through it, light and darkness compete for prominence. Is it perhaps the incorporation of the technological device as something essential for socialization that restricts us? Or are devices those that come “to life,” using their users as facilitators of inter-device contact?

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

Starting from the work of Ben Laposky and his experimentation with oscillators, we sought to work with lines that represent an image reminiscent of the screen of an oscilloscope. For this, we worked with iterated Bezier curves, whose intermediate points are manipulated by sine functions, thus producing the “breathing” movement of the networks whose anchor point is 0 of the X axis and the limits of the canvas. McLuhan says: “The medium is the message because it models and controls the scale and form of human associations and work” and it is in this sense that we take the work with sine waves in a fully computerized environment against the analog signals captured by Laposky, recovering, at the same time, the captured movement, transformed into static through the photographic technique, brought to life thanks to the possibilities of programming.

In addition to the sinusoidal movements of the Bezier curves, the work presents the possibility of being moved around generating an interaction, altering the gray scale of the background of the canvas.

One of the theoretical triggers for the creation of this work was Walter Benjamin’s concept of allegory, worked on in Burguer’s text, where the allegorical is understood as a generation of meaning from the reconfiguration of “isolated fragments of reality” to generate something new, separated from its original context. At the same time, the allegorical, says Burguer, refers to an expression of melancholy and a view of history as decadence. It is these last two points, fundamentally, that motivated the search for work with the calls to old technologies from a digital perspective or the emotional approach put into the work, trying to generate from the visual, mainly with the movements of the networks, a feeling of comfort, of tranquility, of home. We also sought to reinforce this idea of ​​melancholy/decadence with movement in gray scale when traveling (crossing or another word) the work, allowing the journey itself to illuminate or darken it in its entirety.