Software descatalogado
The work ‘Discontinued Software’ is made up of 4 geometric elements. They coexist in a digital environment, programmed in P5, where the possibilities of reorganization and alteration of matter are practically infinite. The objects that make up the work are modified randomly, changing their location and shape. In addition, replicas of themselves are generated in real time.
When we start playback, we can see a circle that moves in a diagonal while its size changes. At the same time, a second circle traces a horizontal movement. There is a second visual instance, in which we will replicate the power on of a machine, by clicking the right mouse button.
The code responds in real time and the computer executes a heterogeneous mass of black and white figures that are positioned from the lower right edge to the rest of the screen.
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
The possibilities of randomizing the work and delegating decision-making to the computer can be interpreted as a continuation of the neo-avant-garde tendency to imitate the hardened. This is how Adorno, cited by Burger, described the expressive forms with which the neo-avant-garde expressed themselves. The fact of using the Fordist chain of mass production as an object of worship in itself can be transferred to the command chain of an online programming code to generate an image. The permanent search for renewal as a modus operandi of the worldview of the consumer society (which begins in the 19th century and deepens throughout the 20th century) is also emulated in the arts. Very ambiguous works are developed in the face of this new parameter formulated by the pressure of a society that craves novelty at all costs. In this regard, Peter Burger writes: “(…) When art accommodates itself to the superficiality of consumer society (…) it must use precisely such a mechanism to resist society itself.” And he continues: “(…) The reproduction of 100 Cambell’s cans (by Warhol) implies resistance against the consumer society only if it is understood that way.” We find here the great paradigms of post-avant-garde art: contradiction and break with tradition.
Burguer cites Adorno to refer to the aporia or contradiction that these works manifest: one should not judge whether these works are a (..) speaker of the well-off consciences (…) or if it is an expression of denunciation.
The use of allegories and/or metaphors complicates the interaction between consumer and producer. Establishing the value of something is problematic given the infinite number of possible analyzes that arise when intellectualizing the creative act. The work of art in the 20th century is characterized by a paradigm shift, which is based on a radical alteration with respect to the reading that can be made of a creation. A toilet can be a toilet or a museum piece.
Chance, once embraced by the surrealists, is the driving force behind the formation of “discontinued software.” The renewal of the forms that the market demands generates the serialization of work. This is reflected in both the work of Duchamp and Warhol. And also in the way a programming language executed by a computer works. Perhaps, we can interpret that making work with a computer is the outcome of the search to break the traditional reproduction systems that the avant-garde inherited in the 20th century.
This work takes inspiration from the work “random polygon” by Frieder Nake, from the videos of Lilian Schwartz and from the glitch work that Alva Noto develops in his collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Literature
Burguer, Peter. (1999). “Nuevos Medios” en AAVV. Arte de siglo XX. Vol. II. München: Taschen.
GROYS, Boris. (2016). “Arte en flujo. Ensayos sobre la evanescencia del presente”. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra.
TAYLOR, Diana. (2012). “¿Cuáles son los antecedentes del arte de performance?” en Performance. Buenos Aires: Asunto Impreso.