Mi área de trabajo, es mi mente...
“My work area is my mind…” It is intended to be a simulation of the mind of an artist/musician composer, who spends his day locked in his mind trying to capture a beautiful melody that he once heard, and that is now trapped in his mind. But since creativity and memory are deceptive, they join forces to prevent this artist from accurately listening to this melody that once lived in his head.
Through a riddle the user will interact with the work and try to capture this pure memory, while it slips and fades, little by little… Thus playing with the concept of ubiquity; (in relation to the constant playing of this melody) and conceptual art.
This work reflects the frustration that artists feel when composing music, receiving an excellent idea, and then losing it in a matter of seconds, due to other intrusive thoughts and how this situation affects the senses, both physical and emotional.
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
To begin to define the concept of the work and explain it. We begin by returning to several important fragments that appear in Valery’s text. Although the text itself focuses much more on a projection of what future artistic installations will be, it also makes a very important mention of the concept of ubiquity and a relationship between work and user.
“The works will acquire a kind of ubiquity. Their immediate presence or their return at any moment will obey a call from us. They will no longer be only in themselves, but everywhere where there is someone and a device” (Paul Valery)
Likewise, it also mentions one of the art channels, which has firmly complied with this concept for a long time.
“Among all the arts, it is music that is closest to being transposed into the modern mode. Its nature and the place it occupies in the world mark it out as the first to modify its formulas of distribution, reproduction, and even production. Of all the arts, it is music that has the greatest demand, the one that blends most with social existence, the closest to that life which it animates, accompanies, or imitates in its organic functioning. Whether it is harmonic progression or lyrics, waiting or action, regime or the unforeseen events of our duration, music knows how to snatch, combine and transfigure its pace and its sensitive values. It plots for us a time of false life, barely hinting at the traces of the true one…” (Paul Valery).
Williams Raymond also mentions 3 elements that are required for the work “vision” to be coherent and visible.
“Three things are required for Vision, the Object, the Organ and the Medium.” At this point, a description of the practical activity of seeing, which is a whole complex process of relationship between the v developed organs of vision and the accessible properties of the things that are seen, is characteristically interrupted by the invention of a third term to which properties that are its own are assigned, an abstraction made from the practical relationship. (Williams Raymond)
This is when the concept of ubiquity and the medium take shape since by making this work located and reproduced day and night in our mind, we only need it to be able to enjoy it, thus also generating an interaction with the user. That is, you hear the melody (object), it begins to live in our mind (organ) and interacts with the user every time he remembers or mentions it (the medium).
“…But as for the universe of hearing, sounds, noises, voices and timbres belong to us from now on. We evoke them when and where we please…” (Paul Valery).
Taking into account the technical and aesthetic characteristics, I was based and inspired by one of the videos made by Giovanna Tommasi “Te Guardo” for the artist Silvana Estrada. Borrowing the idea of a collage image with different concepts. The audio used is the intro of one of the works by 0livia “Tiempo”.
Literature
-VALÉRY, Paul. (1928). “La conquista de la ubicuidad” pp. 132
-WILLIAMS, Raymond. (1977). Del medio a la práctica Social.