Artwork presentation

999

Artist: Celeste Barros

The work is made up of a series of static straight lines that end up moving randomly. It also features 9 squares of different sizes: 6 static and 3 dynamic and cyclical, which leave a trail as they move. All of this appears in white over a black background.

Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual development

The piece uses the conditional structures covered in class to generate the movement of the three squares, along with randomness functions to create the random lines. Aesthetically and conceptually, the piece is strongly based on Georg Nees’s “Schotter,” seeking to explore the visual tension between the strict order of geometry and the destabilization introduced by chance and the machine. The repetition of the squares on a black background exaggerates the tradition of the digital in the collective imagination.

Likewise, the trail seeks to reference José Luis Brea’s notion that what matters is no longer the finished drawing but the program that generates it. The piece does not function as a fixed image, but as a device that produces something different with each execution, turning the artistic act into a continuous process. Like Nees, the artist steps away from drawing by hand in order to design the conditions under which the machine operates on its own. The work-as-object disappears to make way for a work-as-process, where what matters is the logical system that articulates movement, time, and randomness, consolidating the role of the programmer as the author of the rules that grant autonomy to the piece.

It is within this theoretical framework that the poetic experience of the work emerges. It is in these moments, when the production detaches itself from the hand and takes its own path, mutating and developing, that it becomes evident how a part of the creator is embedded in every piece. Watching the squares print and move within their cycle against the random, trembling lines gives weight to the web of artists and ideas that run through personal practice, granting the political duty to create and express. Although the work no longer requires direct care—since it prints and grows on its own—the traces of its origin and process naturally persist within its autonomy.

Bibliography

  • NEES, Georg. (1968). “Schotter”.
  • BREA, José Luis. (2008). “Redefinición de las prácticas artísticas (s. 21)”.
  • BREA, José Luis. (2002). “Breve -y desordenado- antiglosario -o diccionario de tópicos- sobre el arte electrónico”.

Brief resume

My name is Celeste Barros, born on March 9, 2006 in Buenos Aires. I’ve always had a particular interest in art and the internet, which led me to work as a digital artist since 2021. This is why I decided to start the Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at UNA in 2025, and the Bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Arts at the same university this year.