[Steven Reid / Screen Burn (Please Wait), custom software code, apple II green phosphor monitor / 2006] Another concept I like to use in my work that is possibly related to the minimal is the popular idea of ‘noise’ (as opposed to ‘signal’) which comes from information-communication theory. Noise as art just might be the only thing which is impossible to do in art, but still we try. As so poignantly shown by John Cage in his famous piece 4’33”, as soon as you focus upon the noise it becomes signal. Art is signal, because we as artists are asking someone else to receive it. For me, because I think a lot about this noise, which is in a way immaterial or insensible, it puts me in an essentialist mood. I realize that I do not need much to have a good signal because noise itself is on my side. The piece Photo Noise tries to use noise to counter the signal created by the boundaries of a photograph. By algorithmically collecting and displaying an infinite gallery of photography from around the world, one can perhaps again find noise after a period of time. It has a minimal front end, disguising the reality that the photographs are borrowed without permission by the artist and his software algorithm. Many have said the visual format is “boring” and looks like nothing more than a mere slideshow program. I have found no good defensive responses to that – in the face of other highly retinal front ends seen in generative art, it’s true that it’s ridiculously simple. Yet I don’t find it boring at all. I enjoy that the issues involved with the work are encapsulated by the interface. It is the same with the google.com interfaces – all the political, technological, financial, and social intricacies of that corporation are purposely hidden from the user and when using the application one can only ‘imagine’ that these issues might exist – there are no visual clues or hints of any kind other than a cutesy happy logo – its is pure deception, easy on the eyes, and fun! 8 bits of Infinite Contemplation is a piece that more directly references classic minimalism with a capital ‘ISM’. Because it is a contemplative piece, there’s not much I can say about it in words. I would say that I love the work of John Simon Jr., and this one is probably influenced and a little similar to his ‘Every Icon’ piece, but instead of systematically calculating and displaying every possible image, perhaps it systematically contemplates them all. A more recent piece that is also rather minimal is a ‘screen burn’ named please wait. Electricity and time did most of the work for me in this piece. I wanted to remove the hardware’s dependence on software and electricity. I didn’t need to use many images, materials, or clever techniques for that, so I didn’t. I just wrote a program to be burned into the phosphor screen and ran it for six months. I used vintage hardware and software for this because I enjoy them, and because they are free, but mostly because they are the easiest types to burn (many of us might remember accidentally burning one). The result is a stand-alone monitor, forever freed from ‘the grid’, left with some sort of eternal ghostly message. Many that have seen it at first quickly gloss over it as just an old, blank, unplugged monitor, like all those museum goers who walk by the Ad Reinhardt and see it is as nothing but a big black painting. |
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