Cuadrados Locos

The work Cuadrados Locos is an image of 9 squares in total with squares inside them. They are squares that only have two colors: black and white. At first, the image shows no activity, but touching certain keys creates movement, changing colors and moving from their original position. This work represents how our brain works for several hours creating new ideas or new points of view when seeing a work or doing a project. Colors represent different ideas or points of view. And movement represents how the brain works in our daily lives. And how he rests once our day is over, when he restarts and returns to work the next day. Furthermore, visual elements such as the repetition of shapes, the contrasts between black and white, and the participation of the viewer through the keyboard allow a direct connection with the creative mental process. The work conveys the constant rhythm of thought, pauses, advances and restarts. It thus becomes a metaphor for the functioning of the human mind: structured, but capable of change; repetitive, but also flexible. This entire process is shown through simple geometric shapes, which manage to generate a visual experience that represents what happens internally in our head.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

The work was created using digital tools, structuring a visual composition based on concentric squares organized in a perfectly symmetrical grid. The geometric arrangement responds to a modular logic, in which some of the squares remain static, while others incorporate a dynamic rotation. This sequence allows each square to be isolated and manipulated independently, thus achieving the coexistence of elements at rest with others in motion within the same system.

The work has an interactive character that is manifested through the response to certain keys on the keyboard, giving the user the ability to modify the visual experience in real time. In detail, the interaction is activated using the following keys:

1. “C” key: changes the colors by limiting the color scale exclusively to white, gray and black at random. The more times the key is pressed, the colors will continue to change.

2. “D” key: activates the rotary movement of some squares.

3. “F” key: increases the movement of the rotating squares (IT IS IMPORTANT TO PRESS THE D KEY FIRST BECAUSE OTHERWISE THE F KEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO INCREASE THE MOVEMENT), making them move faster.

4. “SPACE” key: restarts the work, returning it to its original state. These visual transformations and interactions are mediated by logical conditions that allow the system to respond to the user’s actions, generating a dynamic and unique visual experience in each execution.

From an aesthetic perspective, the work favors an achromatic palette that provides sobriety and elegance, avoiding chromatic distractions and enhancing the tonal contrast between white, gray and black. This chromatic scale allows the relationship between movement and form to be emphasized, highlighting rotational dynamics over structural rigidity. The modular and repetitive organization of the concentric squares suggests order, stability and mathematical precision, while the movement generates a visual tension that contrasts the static with the dynamic, the predictable with the random. This duality produces a visual experience that oscillates between control and chance.

On a conceptual level, the work is part of the tradition of generative art, taking direct inspiration from the work of Vera Molnár, a pioneer in the use of computing as an artistic medium. Molnár explored how systematic rules combined with chance and viewer intervention can give rise to new visual forms. His approaches are reflected in this work, which through simple commands allows the image to be altered, proposing a reflection on the relationship between artist, machine and viewer, and highlighting visual programming as a creative tool.

At the same time, the piece can be thought of within what José Luis Brea calls electronic art or media-art, understanding that it is not only about using technology as a support, but as an expressive medium in itself. Brea emphasizes that true digital art is not limited to transferring traditional visual languages ​​to the digital plane (such as pixel art), but rather critically explores the possibilities of programming language, what he calls “immanent self-criticism” (Brea, 2002). In this sense, the work does not represent something: it is an autonomous visual system that is activated and transformed in relation to the viewer.

Literature

Brea, José Luis. La era postmedia. Acción comunicativa, prácticas (post)artísticas y dispositivos neomediales. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2002.

Molnár, Vera. 1% Disorder. Karlsruhe: ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, 2019.

Molnár, Vera. Interruptions. París: Éditions Anarchive, 2004.

Fundación Telefónica. Code: The Art of Programming. Madrid, 2015.

Bureaud, Annick. “Vera Molnár and the Emergence of Algorithmic Drawing.” Leonardo, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2011.