Perdida

Once, I went for a walk in a new city and got hopelessly lost. I didn’t have my phone and felt too shy to ask for directions. It was hot, I was hungry and thirsty. The feeling was miserable, disorienting and even painful. I think we have all felt this way and I wanted to create a work that played with this idea of ​​being lost and losing. Using the “processing” technique was the perfect way to experiment with these feelings. While processing provides a space to create infinite creative scenarios, there is a great emphasis on patterns, repetition, mathematics and logic. Computer science provides the space to inject interactivity and even generate random results, but it is also sensitive and often requires the use of trial and error: a reflection on life itself.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

The creation of “Gone Girl” was inspired by the early works of Charles Csuri, specifically Hummingbird II, Five Faces and Bearded Man in a Circle (1966, 1969). As I looked at these works, I began to think about identity, purpose, and the relationship between form and meaning. I created several sketches in a notebook, including notes on how to incorporate interactivity (I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of ​​giving viewers an active role in the creation of a work). Many aspects of the final work changed from the original sketch: in fact, the only element that remained in the final work was the structure of the face and the concept of (loss of) identity.

What actually started as a frustrating coding error became an essential part of the job. The initial structure of the face, continually rotated, translated and drawn, changes the surface landscape over time. It becomes more and more abstract as it is replicated and fills the canvas. This “loss” of the original form, of course, follows the feeling I set out to capture and that is why I moved forward. The line “where is my mind” was added to address the changing composition of the piece. This line, of course, comes from a song of the same name written by the Boston band, Pixies, in 1988 and featured in the iconic 1999 film Fight Club. The use of lyrical(1) and pop culture references in this work could be seen in various ways: from “kitsch” in the opinion of Clement Greenberg (see Mitchell, 1994, for a critique of Greenberg), to conceptualism (Camnitzer, 2008)(2), and even in a certain way, collage (Simó Mulet, 2004) (3).

Thematically, my work can be read as a commentary on loss: losing your security, your spirituality, your sanity, even your own identity; but the medium (computational processing) is equally an important part of the message. In fact, Marshall McLuhan argues that the medium is the message (1964). While p5.js uses the metaphor of sketching (2021), code, math, and logic prevail. Entire interactive worlds can be created using a few lines of code, and from my perspective, the simpler the code, the more impressive the final work will be. Certain essential aspects of processing, such as pattern, interactivity and the illustrious random(); function, acquire their own meaning, even in relation to the content of the work: our reality and our relationship with art (and technology) is now irreversibly connected with lines of code, mathematical algorithms, pattern construction, etc. Although, however, we still maintain a (if somewhat arbitrary) sense of randomness and individuality.

Quotes

(1) The word “mind” is randomly replaced with a different word each time the user moves the mouse. The line “where is my phone” is inspired by the 2016 song “Phone” by American pop artist Lizzo. The song refers to the state of being a woman in a bowling alley who has lost her phone.

(2) I want to make two notes here: first, being an immigrant from the United States to Latin America puts me in an interesting position in terms of how I relate to conceptualism in Latin America, in terms of what I have been exposed to for a long time (since childhood). Second, I had a similar experience when deciding which language to use in this work, as Camnizer explains on page 56 of his book (Camnitzer. 2008).

(3) While Simo Mulet was referring specifically to journalistic media, it could be argued (supported by William Seitz, 1961) that lyrical content could potentially contribute to collage, due to its proximity to poetry. There are many other factors to consider, so for the moment I would declare this a complex connection.

Biography

• CSURI, Charles A. (1966). Five Faces. [Ink on paper. IBM 7094 and drum plotter].
• CSURI, Charles A. (1966). Bearded Man in a Circle. [Ink on paper. IBM 7094 and drum plotter].
• CSURI, Charles A. (1969). Hummingbird II. [Photo screen on Plexiglas. IBM1130 and drum plotter].
• CAMNITZER, Luis. (2008). Conceptual art and conceptualism in Latin America.
• MCLUHAN, Marshall. (1964). The medium is the message. In UNDERSTANDING THE MEDIA.
• MITCHELL, W. J. T. (1994). Ut Pictura Theoria. Abstract painting and language. In Image Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. (p. 200)
• p5.jsHome. (2021). https://p5js.org/
• SEITZ, William C. (1961). Introduction. In The Art of Assemblage. (pg. The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by Doubleday
• SIMÓ MULET, Toni. (2004). The visual languages of modernity collage, assemblage and montage.