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The work seeks to represent the loss of focus that is increasingly perceived in our lives, marked by the overstimulation of digital and physical reality, which is plagued by advertisements, noises and images. Even in the spaces we choose to inhabit, this sensory overload manifests itself persistently. Ironically, we try to escape by diving deeper into what we wish to escape from.

The first step is to turn on the screens with a simple click.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

“You have to be quick if you want to see something. Everything disappears” says Paul Cézanne. Fricke responds: “If Paul Cézanne were alive today he would see his fears confirmed in an alarming way.” (Fricke, 1999, pp. 577). This situation remains as valid as it was 24 years ago. Overstimulation from the incessant production of content that already seems endless makes it impossible to catch up. Suddenly everything demands our attention and with so much easily accessible information we no longer know where to look. And if after the Industrial Revolution and the world wars everything seemed suffocating, today there is no time to drown.

Contemporary art poses the impossibility of being faithfully represented because, as Aira says in On Contemporary Art: “you cannot photograph a concept” (Aira, 2013, pp. 13). For this reason, the viewer is required to move, go to where the work is and experience it firsthand. In this day and age, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get people to abandon the perpetual consumption of simplified content and experience slightly more complex forms. What’s more, if they can’t understand it, they get frustrated and return to those virtual spaces in search of validation. How can a pile of candy be considered art? Paradoxically, then they see something even more absurd in some application and are surprised by its “genius.” However, this apparent genius lacks both substance and rhetoric, unlike that pile of candy that they so hate. Aira sums it up perfectly, “the object becomes secondary to the story from which it emerges.” (Aira, 2013, pp. 16). He says it, contemporary art ”… has annulled time by compressing the present…” (Aira, 2013, pp. 15) and in a time in which it is felt that anxiety (future) and depression (past) reign, this art comes to disturb and bother anyone who wants to pay attention to it.

With this writing he does not want to fall into the position of just another art student complaining that people do not understand the works as he does. Firstly, because it is difficult to have the knowledge and critical eye necessary to understand them in their entirety. Second, it is very easy to be attracted to this type of content and for it to become an obsession. Suddenly, that’s it: it’s over, the screen turns off, and there your reflection returns. At that moment the realization dawns that you spent 6 hours doing nothing, watching nothing, and consuming content that means nothing.

The work in itself is a contradiction, made in and for the same medium that it wants to criticize. Arns explains: “software art draws our attention to the fact that our (media) environment increasingly relies on programmed structures.” (Arns, 2005, pp. 10). Everything around us begins to have a level of programming, it is impossible to escape from this fact. Criticizing what was done with these structures from the middle, in my opinion, reinforces the message. Communicating through the same thing that is criticized has, in my opinion, more weight than doing so through something completely unrelated.

So, what happens when we can’t focus because everything around us demands our attention? What remains if we cannot do or create because of this lack? What happens when we don’t need to do things to feel pleasure? What remains when there is nothing left?

The work seeks to raise these questions through the use of both the medium’s own resources and their combination with others (such as sound and recordings). It acts as an observer, redirecting attention to the user, the same one who was unable to consecrate it. Everything culminates with a black mirror and white noise.

Literature

AIRA, César. ([2013], 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo” en Sobre el arte contemporáneo. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, pp. 11-56. (DAA: 1:02m)

FRICKE, Christiane. (1999). “Nuevos Medios”. En “AAVV. Arte de siglo XX. Vol. II. München: Taschen. pp.576-590.

ARNS, Inke. (2005). “El código como acto de habla performativo”. En Revista Artnodes, Julio de 2005, ISSN 1695-5951