Transmutación

Humanity as we know it is constantly mutating into a new stage. Our nature is being crossed and modified by the technologies that we have created as a species; and from which today we seem to be inseparable. The pictorial, photographic or film representation processes (not counting exceptions such as 3D), entail a transmutation of the human body, which becomes a two-dimensional figure. This process has been modifying our perception of the world. The work proposes, through the creation of a digital body, to return three-dimensionality to images of the human body.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development Start the action by pressing the “a” key

Transmutation is made up of a three-dimensional cube whose faces are x-ray images. These images are integrated into a video that is displayed in a loop on each of the faces of the cube, which begin their movement once the user initiates the action by pressing the “a” key; allowing with a simple interaction to generate different perspectives of the figure. On the sound level, the work is equipped with a monotonous sound effect of an electronic nature. The intention of this sound is to accompany and contextualize the images.

The search of the work is to generate a new three-dimensional perspective using two-dimensional images. The use of the code activates an action that breaks the two-dimensionality of the image, generating a new meaning through the three-dimensionality of the figure. Inke Arns, in her text “Code as a performative speech act (2005)”, describes software art in this way:

“Software art implies an artistic activity that, thanks to its own medium - or rather, the material - allows critical reflection on software (and its cultural impact). According to Florian Cramer, software art highlights the aesthetic and political subtexts of apparently neutral technical commands” (1).

I find it interesting to bring up these concepts in relation to the work, in which the appearance of the third dimension invites the viewer to reflect on the layers of meaning that lie beneath apparently neutral images. Each existing image is the result of years of research and investment in technological advances that made it possible, which inevitably burdens the images with a political and cultural subtext that hides in plain sight.

Following César Aira’s reflections on contemporary art, I find his analysis of the role of “the good” within art interesting:

“Art is not art if it is done well (that is, if it is subjected to already established values). Art does not have to be done well (…) If it is art, or for it to be art, it must create new values; it does not need to be good, on the contrary: if it can be described as good it is because it is obeying already established quality parameters (…) Creating values is intervening in the personal history of the viewer. Creating a taste for it, giving it a new look…” (2).

For Aira, a well-made work of art is a work that responds to already established canons. I find it interesting to take this idea as an approach to work from already existing images, manipulating them to create new ethical and aesthetic values ​​(both in the viewer’s gaze and in one’s own). It is not about generating beautiful images, but about attacking their veracity and presumption of innocence.

Literature

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

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