OESA

Presentation

I read by Nathalie Heinich a collection of exploits of people in Europe and the United States who won in the game that they themselves built, based on their own conditions. Inevitably, history, art, movements and avant-garde movements arrive that have been exported from the global center to establish an absolute reference of collective memory. I don’t understand what they can do for me. I prefer not to understand it. I prefer to forget it. The history of progress and the accumulation of knowledge does not attract me. I do not think it is worth insisting on a system whose reference is exclusive of my own context.

I played with the graphic possibilities of solving a mathematical problem. I like the resulting image because it makes evident the weight of the center, that point from which all the cycles start and reach (cycles that are overwritten in the desire for an unattainable result). I quote here the work of Ben Laposky, an American who, because he is playing at the very center of what later history recognizes as a point of origin, is considered today a pioneer of this fictitious structure called multimedia art.

I rescue experimentation as the basis of expression, whether in words, acts, images, machines, ideas, etc., etc. Playing is an accessible way to experiment. Reading can be useful for certain processes, but reading history and searching for oneself in it hides a trap that I will try to escape: history contains only what power needs to understand, not what each territory expresses.

Problem

The Collatz conjecture, or “3n+1”, proposes that by repeatedly applying two simple rules* on any number, a series will be obtained that always ends up reaching 1. It is easy to calculate it in small numbers and to date, with any imaginable number that has been attempted, the conjecture remains true. But smallness and imagination are relative, they depend on what is taken as a reference of origin. With distant numbers the process becomes absurdly extensive. The problem is that, despite the apparently simple premises, it has not been possible to solve it through a complete demonstration. That is to say, it is not understood why it happens, it is impossible to know if it is always true or if it is a particularity of the numbers that are known.

(*) The rules are as follows: starting from a positive integer, evaluate whether it is even or not. In even case, divide by 2. In odd case, multiply by 3 and add 1. Apply the same instructions again to the result obtained until (eventually) reaching 1.

Forgetting is Learning

I am attracted to this problem because it reveals a trace of how anthropocentric rational language is. Obtaining a result or not ultimately depends on the distance from the framework established by the question itself. We are not used to seeing the limit of what can be understood because the composition retracts into its own center: the human being is the geometric measure of things. Humanistic self-perception generates, sustains and defends the boundaries between what exists and what does not, what is appropriable and what is not. Reason is constructed as a map of a territory under control. Precisely as a system of thought, humanism developed hand in hand with European expansionism. Ethnocide, looting, evangelization and slavery were not parallel phenomena, they are the very internal core of the project. And the occupation has never been invisible, on the contrary, from the center and in all directions history emerges, with total impunity, with total impudence, that modern mythological story to which the sources of “everything that exists” refer.

The spiral expands, it never stops. The human as a concept is a device of colonial occupation because, being an arbitrary measure, its use requires a constant learning process (accessing knowledge becomes a work activity). Thus bonds of scarcity are created, historicity is granted only to those who are recognized as humanity. Thus, institutional knowledge legitimizes its authority and writes on top of other people’s stories. In this way, the imagination and the production of identity of the occupied territories are devalued, and the foundations of profitable trade (extractivism) are established. Knowledge as doctrine and progress as faith are functional adaptations to the naturalization of capitalism in culture.

Literature

BOU, Luis César. (2007). “África y la historia”. Editorial Último Recurso. Fuente: http://www.ceid.edu.ar/librosdigitales/africa_y_la_historia_luis_cesar_bou.pdf

HEINICH, Nathalie. (2014). “La obra más allá del objeto”. en El paradigma del arte contemporáneo: estructuras de una revolución artística. Madrid: Casimiro, pp. 95-119. (DAA: 39m)

RODNEY, Walter. (1972). “Cómo Europa subdesarrolló al África”. Capítulo Cuatro. Europa y las raíces del subdesarrollo africano –hasta 1885. Traducción: Luis César Bou. Fuente: https://www.geocities.ws/obserflictos/rodney.html

Código

• repositorio github

• explicación editor-p5

Controles

“Click” en el centro para explorar otras formas
(cambia longitud y angulos aleatoriamente)

“1” para aumentar longitud
”2” para disminuir longitud

“3” para aumentar angulo par
”4” para disminuir angulo par

“5” para aumentar angulo impar
”6” para disminuir angulo impar

“7” para aumentar opacidad fondo
”8” para disminuir opacidad fondo
”9” para fondo transparente

“A” para aumentar velocidad
”S” para restablecer velocidad por defecto
”D” para disminuir velocidad

“W” para reiniciar, sin cambiar valores

“K” para reiniciar, restableciendo valores por defecto

“P” para pausar / reanudar
”O” para guardar imagen