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Artwork presentation

El poder del pixel

Artist: Serena Mali Figueiro
Year 2022
Semester First semester
Fecha October 9, 2022

The Power of the Pixel is a work that for two weeks changed my weekend of waste and debauchery for discipline and perseverance, I also replaced a couple of lunches and dinners with codes.

A work based on the superposition of different types of shapes that plays with depths through of address changes.

My work is greatly influenced by Lillian Schwartz who quickly caught my attention with her works made up of primitive and simple forms in which you can see that the attraction is in the techniques used and in the unconventional process for the time-space in which they were created.

Lillian Schwartz was one of the pioneers of “computational art”, experimenting with kinetic fluids, electronic mobiles and plastic images created from chemical experiments. These experiences would later lead her to enter Bell Lab in 1968, where she developed computer programs, editing techniques and 2D and 3D graphic animation.

It was not my idea that my work would be so similar to Schwartz’s works but I felt they were very similar to my visual and aesthetic criteria, they resonated a lot in my head and they simply led me to the result of my work.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

I started designing random white squares and rectangles, then I removed the edges so that they were not a limitation and on top of that I started adding squares and rectangles of the background color (black) to create different shapes and create areas with more visual power, and in them I started playing with lines in different directions, overlapping squares with alternating tones and some abstract shapes.

The name of the work was born from my idea that the pixel has the power to take your vision wherever it wants, I also believe that lines, points and shapes with that periodicity and overlap greatly stimulate the vision of the receiver, and as receivers who live in this era we seek the minimum abstraction of things and constant stimulation, when reaching this conclusion that we seek constant stimulation, Valery, Paul’s text “The conquest of ubiquity” came to mind as Paul wrote.

Nowadays we have much more power to act on things than the men who established the fine arts in ancient times used to have and as he anticipated the reproduction and transmission of works will lose their authenticity, undoubtedly the idea of ​​art will change, and I am a little conflicted with the indecision that this generates in me.

I believe that although in this life everything changes constantly and it is fun to adapt to change, it seems somewhat dangerous to me that art as we knew it is going to change, since there are so many stimuli and so many things to see, the idea of art is going to be devalued and it is going to be very difficult to disaggregate between what is “art” and what is not, but at the same time I wonder if I should continue to be governed by these traditional ideas of art or if I just let myself get carried away by this era. Aquarian where we cannot doubt that there is much more freedom in terms of ideas, ways of thinking and being and where no one can tell you that something is wrong or something is right in terms of artistic, aesthetic aspects, etc. and this makes the creation of artistic pieces much more accessible and unlimited.

But I read Paul’s text again and I am disturbed by his comparison of the artistic work with services such as water, gas, etc. and when he opens the question of whether we are not already subject to the work of art as to domestic services and how (in my words) our senses are going to generate dependence on the work of art.

It scares me to think that in the future art will not stimulate our senses as much as it currently does.

My head also resonated when reading Jose Luis Brea’s text “The redefinition of artistic practices” specifically when he talks about the artist, and his relationship with the temporal context and the morality that exists regarding contemporary ideas according to me influenced by past eras. About this, I think that art is about absorbing your gaze and your experience of the world, processing it in your system and vomiting it out, but it is also the externalization of a person’s mental and processes, and even though people are influenced by previous eras, constant change means that things are never the same, therefore neither are people and art.

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