Sobre El Cambio De Forma
Title of the work: On the Change of Form
2026 Micaela Videla https://editor.p5js.org/MicaelaVidela/sketches/ht1M_lVHV The piece is inspired by the artistic practices of Herbert W. Franke, a pioneer of digital art. Developed in p5.js, the work seeks to reflect on movement through human interaction with the piece itself. Micaela Videla was born in the City of Buenos Aires in the year two thousand. An innate music lover, she began her academic training in Music and Classical Dance. Post-pandemic, she started delving into artistic creation through software and the world of the internet. For a period, she worked in cultural management, organizing exhibitions and live shows, and producing interviews, building a record of local musical and contemporary culture. She is currently studying Multimedia Arts at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA).
When I began working on this piece, I was reading Report on the Blind by Sabato. It may seem like a minor detail, but that day I underlined a passage on pages 52 and 53 of my edition, on the subway, on my way to a class for this course. Fernando Vidal, the character, wonders whether his name has an intrinsic connection to his soul. He calls it “weighty” that a person can change their mind, deteriorate spiritually, suffer catastrophes, and still be given the same name.
During class, in one of those conversations that wander off on tangents, Mauri, the professor, spoke about the things that “speak to us” — how what we live through is reflected in the pieces we produce. This chain of events set off the first sketches of this work. How much can we change in form and still be given the same name?
Herbert W. Franke, an Austrian and pioneer of digital art, studied physics, mathematics, and philosophy before entering the world of art. That training is reflected in his output; we see traces of what spoke to him. He worked with oscilloscopes, generating oscillograms, and also with Mathematica, a program similar to Processing. In one of his exhibitions that I found online, I saw, alongside a set of pieces, this phrase: “Every image can be described mathematically.”
I was struck by how his way of producing art kept changing, up to launching NFTs in 2022, the same year he died. His work grew in ubiquity: it is no longer only in itself, but everywhere there is someone and a device. We see this at Ars Electronica, the cultural and scientific center Franke helped found in Austria, a space that invites us to rethink what is and isn’t art. As Brea writes, the art of this century is produced, distributed, and disseminated. I was able to browse through many of these works from my computer, in Argentina, far from where they are physically located.
In this piece I wanted to capture some of the ideas that inspired me and invite the viewer to become part of the construction of the image. The work consists of twenty-three concentric Lissajous curves unfolding over background figures that change depending on which key is pressed (A, S, or D). While the mouse remains outside the canvas, the curves keep their shape; as soon as the viewer enters with the cursor, the mouse’s position flattens and stretches the curves, and their frequencies oscillate over time, generating constant movement. When the cursor leaves the area, the figure returns to its fixed shape. The viewer is not a passive spectator — they choose the form they contemplate.
And yet, the name of the piece remains the same, even as the sets of figures change: the work changes, the figures blend and deform, almost like in a lysergic dream, but it always remains, just like Fernando Vidal, On the Change of Form.
Bibliography https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nddr11NpGaU https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/authors/herbert-w-franke https://ars.electronica.art/news/en/