(in)significante

The technologies developed for the digitalization of existence and big data allow us easy access to environments where information circulates at high speed and with a practically infinite flow. With them, not only are linear units of meaning becoming scarcer and replaced by hypertext, but also, the text is presented to us in a short, compressed format.

Under an economic paradigm and its premise of always obtaining the best cost-benefit, phenomena such as media panelism; political slogans; tips for a better life; social networks with their narcissistic logic; Even servers with enormous amounts of data add to this vertigo and have in common the ability to make us ignore the question about how these meaning structures are sustained.

This work is an invitation to reflect on the effects produced by our ways of entering this information flow and linking ourselves with these technologies. To think of the text as something that stops us, something that takes us time and work. In short, a vindication of the signifier.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

One of the main characteristics of the “Drakula” series, made by Herbert W. Franke, is symmetry. Using this structure, the visual space is divided into two, with one of its halves fading after a short period of time, in the search to metaphorize the speed with which we go through the various information that daily life presents to us, through the devices created for it; On the other hand, it serves as a reflection of the disappearance of a textual dimension, which is increasingly scarce.

The user can intervene in the work by clicking and, holding down, re-visualize the hidden elements, exposing the work that must be done to keep the text present and, along with it, the attitude of suspicion.

These ideas derive from the book “Technocene. Algorithms, biohackers and new forms of life.” by Flavia Costa (more specifically from the chapter “Infotechnological ways of life”), where the author draws the line that separates the current era from its predecessors by the way in which we inhabit the flow of information and the technologies that emerged from this process. In the text, the word “technology” is interpreted in the broadest possible way, covering everything from the smartphone to the mother tongue, thus recovering a certain degree of justice for the term. It also refers to the neo-liberal conceptual framework, its ideas of economics and “Human Capital”, where human life ends up being a series of decisions based on economic profitability.

In this sociocultural context, José Luis Brea proposes artistic practice as a generator of new strategies of affection: ”(…) we must then recognize that symbolic production practices - activities oriented to the production, transmission and circulation in the public domain of affects and concepts (desires and meanings, thoughts and passions) - have a leading, absolutely and seriously priority role in them. The artist as producer no longer operates in them as a symbolic-totemic figure, but rather as a genuine participant in social exchanges - of intellectual production and desiring production”.

In the same essay, “Third Threshold”, Brea adds: “The work that concerns artistic practices in this regard then has to do with the production of imaginary in societies of immaterial labor. At a generic, ideological level, this is focused on the implementation of alternative imaginaries to the dominant ones in the process of globalization and the critical approach to the mechanisms and modes of production of representation…”.

An attempt is made here to respond to the call of artistic endeavor to make use of a critical reflection on the dominant frameworks of thought and culture. Inhabit and enable both questioning and listening to, through them, open new affective schemes, new configurations of desire and meaning.

Literature

Costa, Flavia. “Formas de vida infotecnológicas” en Tecnoceno. Algoritmos, biohackers y nuevas formas de vida. Buenos Aires, Editorial Taurus, 2021.

Brea, José Luis. “Apéndice: Redefinición de las prácticas artísticas” en Tercer Umbral. Estatuto de las prácticas artísticas en la era del capitalismo cultural. Murcia, Editorial CENDEAC, 2004.

Kate Vass Galerie. (n.d.). Math Goes Art by Herbert W. Franke. https://www.katevassgalerie.com/math-goes-art-by-herbert-w-franke

Expanded Art. (n.d.). Drakula – Vintage Print. Expanded Art. https://www.expanded.art/products/drakula-vintage-print