Slow down, contemplate, create.
– COMING SOON! –
A new type of application: a hybrid between a work of art and an application. It’s a digital sculpture. But it’s not static. In fact, it’s always different. And it’s up to you to decide whether to start it again, to redeploy it in infinite, random combinations.
Enter this application as you would a museum: a space where you can extract yourself from the incessant flow of solicitations and the trap of frenetic content consumption fueled by endless scrolling. As you explore this work, you’ll find a sense of calm. It’s a similar experience to contemplating an “analog” art, but one you can enjoy at any time, wherever you are.
Art & App, united.
There’s hardly an aspect of our lives and our world that isn’t touched and transformed by mobile devices and their Applications. Ok, so, what about Art?
In June 2007, the release of the first iPhone ushered in an unprecedented technological revolution—at once constant, progressive, and ongoing. With each new technical breakthrough and the exploration of fresh digital frontiers, smartphones and tablets continue to transform ever more facets of our lives. There’s no “tipping point”: there have been many, and new ones keep emerging!
These devices have become omnipresent intermediaries—genuine, indispensable prostheses in our relationship with the World—altering our interactions, our experiences, and of course our perception of reality, ever more deeply.
The first artwork, hybrid, both Art & Application designed specifically for this medium.
Indeed, it can be fascinating enough to imitate the “real” by virtually recreating museum or exhibition halls and giving the illusion of wandering inside, exhibiting reproductions of works originally created to be experienced “in real life”.
Or, to create virtual 3D sculptures in a virtual space, as in my work with Bertrand Lavier.
But what about stand-alone artworks which would be designed from the outset to take account of the specific features of these devices, exploring what they offer that is greater, lesser or different?
By harnessing their particularities, we can imagine forms of artistic experience that are both meaningful and unprecedented.
Let’s recover what is extraordinary about a direct, contemplative encounter with an artwork: alone, face to face, in the silence and calm of an empty museum.
To do this, we first need to free ourselves from the system of incessant stream of visual prompts and the perpetual call to click & scroll.
A minimal interface, a slower pace, white cubes, grey background… Let’s calm things down!
…in a nod to the absolute minimalism of Kasimir Malevich’s “White Square on White Background” (on Wikipedia, on MoMA).
But let’s also seize the opportunity to explore what only an artwork conceived for this medium can offer.
Here, infinite random variations, triggered by you. Not only is this sculpture never fixed once and for all, but there’s no initial state to modify—none at all! It’s composed of white and translucent cubes on a grey background, but never in the same combination of quantities, sizes, or placements. As combinations go, it can even appear completely empty!
Start the process, watch it smoothly reconfigure itself, take the time to appreciate it… then restart!
