NonStop

Nonstop emerged from untwisting the train of thought through the works of Valery Paul, Mcluhan Marshall and Heinich Natalie. The ubiquity, the medium, a work that goes beyond itself. The interweaving of these texts led me to the feeling of something that is slipping out of our hands; This is how a very simple code arose, which asks us for a single click to start, randomly at any point on the Canvas, a simple line that, if we don’t stop it, will only continue (and continue) to be the mother of other lines. thus seeing this non-stop repetition of a single line/information, which is not controlled by whoever takes the first step to see it.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

Valery Paul talks about how art will become ubiquitous, and how we can find it whenever we want just by having a device. Find this freedom as a joy, a pleasure. It talks about filling voids or creating pleasant spaces through being able to choose as we please; There is magic, there is tenderness, there is movement of the spirit.

But it distressed me to think that this ubiquity did not so much lead to filling the void of a Sunday with some music that sweetens our spirit, but rather to filling the empty hour on public transportation with videos and photos that we tend to forget or with music that tries to silence the train of thoughts that we cannot stop (anxiety, the great discomfort of this era). Likewise, I really enjoy when I can watch the day go by with a Mac DeMarco album, or be able to select the movie I want to see from the comfort of piracy and my home, thanks to that ubiquity.

Now that 95 years have passed since Valery’s text, I can understand how he imagined and projected that freedom of choice; At some point that ubiquity had its share of enjoyment, until it became everyday (falling into unconsciousness) and I think it mostly overwhelmed us. This leads to the fact that the beauty that Paul saw projected in ubiquity is not the norm, but rather the exception, having rather to make moments for us so that that choice, that freedom, gives us real joy and enjoyment, just like the one that Valery imagined, felt and expressed. Well, that ubiquity, for the most part, escapes our hands.

This is where Mcluhan comes in when he expresses that the media has a profound impact and shapes our way of thinking, perceiving and communicating. I stayed mostly with the criticism he made of Sarnoff. Sarnoff asserts that the products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; Their value is determined by the way they are used. Mcluhan refutes this by saying that it is not just about how the media is used, but also how the media themselves shape our culture and our thinking. The media are a fundamental part of our current communication network, therefore the value we assign to it escapes our hands; We are not directly responsible for its value and use. Even Mcluhan says we are not aware. He mentions the media as an extension of us.

In conclusion: as a pretext object, as an activator, I formed a work inspired by the sensations of movement and oscillations of the works of Ben Laposky and the work Ninety “computer-generated sinusoids with linearly increasing period” by Michael Noll, With a single click we randomly put into operation at any point on Canvas, a line that, if we do not stop it, will only continue (and continue), being the mother of other lines that vary their rotation with each update of the draw; thus seeing this non-stop of lines/information, which are not controlled by whoever takes the first step to see them.

This work tries, in a banal way, to get closer to this idea that, beyond the click, the rest escapes from the hands of the viewer, as well as those of the creator: since those lines that trigger the click are generated randomly (with a “noise”, similar to “random” but more “controlled” and/or harmonious), a reflection of the idea that ubiquity and the media have their own dynamics that we cannot completely control.

Literature

• VALÉRY, Paul. ([1960], 1999). La conquista de la ubicuidad (1928). En Piezas sobre arte. Madrid: Visor, pp.131-133. (DAA: 10m)

• HEINICH, Nathalie. ([2014], 2017). “La obra más allá del objeto” en El paradigma del arte contemporáneo: estructuras de una revolución artística. Madrid: Casimiro, pp. 95-119. (DAA: 39m)

• MCLUHAN, Marshall. ([1964], 1997). “El medio es el mensaje” en Comprender los medios de comunicación: las extensiones del ser humano. Barcelona: Paidós, pp. 29-42. (DAA: 46m)