¿Ningún cuerpo es tierra firme?
“No body is solid ground?” presents three black and white photographs, in which a couple is portrayed in various landscapes.
When clicking, there is the possibility of drawing juxtaposed polygons, which vary in color taking as reference the tones of the sector of the background photograph on which the mouse rests. These polygons also change their size depending on the position on the vertical axis of the mouse. In each photograph, the background can be altered by drawing the polygons, but the characters found there remain immutable and impenetrable, since the polygons do not pass through them.
In addition, the work allows you to modify the sound when clicking on the canvas. While when loading the work, a distortion is heard with some variations over time, when you press the right mouse button, this sound is turned off, giving rise to a noise floor of lower intensity.
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
“No body is solid ground?” It starts from the need to bring together resources from very different places, to delve deeper into a concept that questions the contrast between life-death/presence-absence. For this, three analog photographs that have gone through a digitization process are taken as a starting point, along with polygonal drawings generated by code, which are activated when interacting with the work. Inke Arns, in The code as a performative speech act, states:
“Software art does not refer to software merely as a pragmatic, invisible tool that generates certain visible results, but, on the contrary, focuses on the program code itself – even when this code is not explicitly left open or foregrounded. According to Florian Cramer, software art highlights the aesthetic and political subtexts of seemingly neutral technical commands.”
In the work, the code is used to make these resources from different worlds coexist, with the intention of developing a concept that, from a formal point of view, raises the question that arises when being able to modify the background, but not the figure. In this sense, Arns alludes to the performativity of the code and suggests that this is “one of the reasons for the interest of contemporary artists in using software as artistic material.” While whoever interacts with the work can draw, fill, brush and intervene in the background until achieving an abstraction of what previously happened in the photograph, the figure of the couple will remain completely unchanged, since it is not possible to cross those pixels through any polygon. So no body is solid ground?
Although this phrase, lacking question marks, invites us to reflect on human transience, the presence of said signs evokes an “absence” that transcends the barriers of finitude. In the work, the impenetrable bodies remain there, at the same time that the environment can undergo any type of alteration determined by whoever wishes to click on it. The feeling that a bond leaves is something capable of lasting beyond life and death. Firm ground is the corporeal of the embrace; embrace capable of overcoming the tangible limits of the body itself.
The title comes from a verse from “Umbrío”, a poem from the book Monologue of the Fool by Jorge Boccanera. The added question marks are the kickstart to develop the work. In another verse, Boccanera states that photography is portrayed time. It is precisely there where arrest can arise, evoked in the form of silence: a pause in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that stuns our own steps, steps that continue to generate future memories. What lasts when the noise falls silent?
Literature
ARNS, Inke. (1978). “El código como acto de habla performativo” en David R. Blumenthal: Understanding Jewish Mysticism. Nueva York: Ktav Publishing, pp. 22-29.
BOCCANERA, Jorge. (2015). “Umbrío” en Monólogo del necio. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Editora Patria Grande, pp. 52-54.