Parasitados
Taking as a starting point the work of Ben Laposky and the writings of Paul Valéry and Marshall McLuhan, I try to address the impact of the technological environment on that “adornment of leisure” predicted by Paul Valéry in his text. Understanding the subject as a victim of his desire to know it, conquer it, listen to it, know it and see everything, the illusion of control will appear in the face of the machinery of “sensory stimuli” to which he is continually exposed while a pair of eyes are lost in the infinity of images.
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
In 1953 Ben Laposky (American mathematician and artist) presented “Electronic Abstractions”. Using a cathode ray oscilloscope with sine wave generators he created the first images generated by an electronic machine which he called “Oscillons”.
From its exhibition to 2023, the year in which I present this practical work, 70 years have passed. I use this number or its multiples to calculate distances, sizes and scales throughout the sketch. To try to emulate the style of Laposky’s “Oscillons” I work with line repetition (for cycle) and rotate () at different speeds and angles that combined with sin () and cos () generate organic circular movements.
The RAE defines the word ubiquitous in the following way:
- adj. Said mainly of God: Who is present at the same time everywhere.
- adj. Said of a person: Who wants to witness everything and lives in continuous movement.
In this sense we could say that we have managed to witness everything, being everywhere at the same time using technology as an extension of our senses.
As Valéry predicted in his text, visual stimuli have invaded us in the same way that began to happen in his time with music in bars. We live exposed to a countless amount of visual stimuli: advertisements, signs, lights, billboards, television, telephones, computers, etc. Most of us start our day by looking at our phones, even if it’s just to turn off the alarm, check the time, or check the weather. Once inside, it is almost impossible not to enter one of the thousand apps that we use to solve tasks from the simplest to the most complex, expand our capabilities or “our being in a new technological form” as McLuhan points out in his writing. These apps have huge teams of people dedicated to studying the exact number of seconds that an interaction should last so that we spend more time in it; how many colors and seconds we can handle; the size of the buttons and their structure so that they are easy enough to use; Generally free, we don’t pay for them with money but with time.
They sell us a lifestyle: what to use or listen to, tips to achieve anything, motivational phrases, kittens, tips to achieve a dream life. If you want to stop being X: do this, eat that, listen to that, learn that. Information, colors, stimuli… It is so difficult to avoid it, that even when you try, you find yourself watching videos that explain how to stop watching videos or spending time on screens.
With this tp I try to show that impossibility of escaping the images: it begins with the oscilloscope that represents the device generating the image, the image follows one another and then a pair of eyes that receive flashes and get lost in an endless number of images and time. The crosses appear as the illusion (not the possibility) that the user can stop the stimuli, as time passes they begin to be lost and with this it is evident that the only way to stop the images will be by closing the window in which the sketch is played.
Literature
VALERY, Paul. (1928). “La conquista de la ubicuidad”. En Piezas sobre arte. Madrid: Visor.
MCLUHAN Marshall. (1964). “El medio es el mensaje”. Comprender los medios de comunicación: las extensiones del ser humano. Barcelona: Paidós.