Afán simbólico

This work consists of a still image of a fragment of the program code of the work itself. The code contains an indication to the viewer that they can rotate the image. If the viewer commits by following that indication, the work will be activated.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

In generative art, the code focuses on generating an impressive result for those who watch its execution, but it is not usually read or appreciated for what the program itself is. In the so-called software art, on the other hand, there is an intention of beauty also in programming. But this beauty is sometimes hidden from the eyes of the public. Which means, as often happens in contemporary art, that the distance between what can be sensibly experienced through interaction with the work, and what must be read through the pen of its authors, is sometimes quite large.

The work Afánsymbolic executes an image of its own code. The program and the result it generates cannot now be distinguished. Such a simple operation dissolves the border between software art and generative art. But this is not enough for the work to have substance. This code is static. It would be of no interest if it only generated itself. If it didn’t give rise to anything new, nothing that would cause an emotion in the spectators. As in pure software art, code is dead if it doesn’t have a viewer. Every work is dead if it does not have a viewer. It is when an audience becomes involved with what the work has to show, that it shines, giving way to fire, to something that no one could imagine even if it was implicit in the program. Because although the work is contained in the code from the beginning, we are sensitive beings and we need to see what it generates.

In any piece of interactive art, the viewer interacts with pieces of code. However, this explicitly shows that it is the audience that makes it work, becoming a performer of the piece. When Afánsymbolic begins to execute it is just that: code, an image of itself and nothing else, which could well be running for ten thousand years without purpose. But everything changes when the viewer arrives. What emerges then is something that could not be anticipated, it is a phenomenon so complex as to touch sensibilities, although it emerges from simple laws. In the case of this work, the phenomenon is fascinating because it is chaotic like fire, although it is totally determined by the program and the action of the viewer.

For a computer running software to exist, a society with all the scientific and mathematical domain that modernist thought promotes and champions is necessary. Between that piece of code, and the person, who, with all its contradictions, becomes the axis of postmodern thought, what emerges is art: a technique subordinated to the sensible, placed in function of feeling, synthesis of the duality of the human being.

Literature

ARNS, Inke. (2005). El código como acto de habla performativo

GALANTER, Philip. (2011). Entre dos fuegos - el arte-ciencia y la guerra entre ciencia y humanidades

AIRA, César. (2013). Sobre el arte contemporáneo