Fosfenos

Description Fosfenos (Phosphenes) is a threshold where light emerges from the saturation of shadows, allowing the mind to project its own images through active intervention. It is a generative artwork consisting of a system that creates still images from moving ones, offering the viewer the chance to create their own image through the subjectivity of perception and individual variation. Fosfenos is a collection of “nothing” that, through the presence of “someone,” might just become “something.”

Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual development The work features a translucent black canvas inhabited by a multitude of scalene triangles of varying vertex configurations and sizes. These shapes simultaneously move, rotate, and scale; through varying degrees of opacity and translucency, they overlap to create an image in constant motion. It is an invisible system where the accumulation of shapes dissolves lines to create a unique atmosphere—disordered yet functional. Fosfenos is completed when the viewer uses a mouse to intervene on the canvas within the available parameters, creating a work rooted in spontaneity.

This piece engages with the psychological, the existential, and the immaterial, uniting the mathematical rigidity of code with the subjectivity of human perception. We draw upon memories, dreams, fears, imagination, and the disruptive; upon darkness—that which defies definition yet is understood as “something”; upon chaos and disorder; and upon what you see when you close your eyes. Using our program, we can “paint” the canvas—creating skies, seas, clouds, and stars with pixels that flow autonomously yet conspire with the viewer to produce the final result.

To create this work, we adopted two concepts from Brea: First concept: “The contemporary artist abandons the traditional studio to inhabit the territory of mediation; they are no longer a creator of closed forms, but an operator within the networks of meaning and the construction of subjectivity.” Second concept: Brea held that “digital art transforms the artistic experience by turning the viewer into an active participant in the creation of the work.”

As mentioned in the technical description, our work is incomplete on its own. It constantly awaits the viewer’s intervention; we do not merely intend for the viewer to act as a spectator, but rather seek to offer them a participatory role—to the point where they might be considered the author of their own image—in order to make them part of the work.

Bibliography BREA, José Luis. (2002). “Brief (and messy) antiglosary –the dictionary of topics - about it electronic art” BREA, José Luis. (2008). “Redefinition of artistic practices (s). 21)”