Failures of Representation

"I think that there is less and less interest in adequate, pleasing, skillful, appropriate, successful, informative, functional representation, and more and more interest in representation that fails. We care about representation when it goes wrong, and we don’t notice when it works well. In part that is the result of our modernist heritage: we don’t spend time with naturalism because we associate it either with older ideologies of the image, those in force from the Renaissance to the rise of Impressionism, or else with capitalist consumerism and its army of coercive representations. Skilfull representation, in particular, is hard to think about except as a constructed idea that responds to certain desires in relation to images and to fine art.i Adequate representation, mimesis, naturalism, and realism sound like old, asked-and-answered problems. On the other hand, we have not abandoned representation. On the contrary: we are fascinated by it. I take this ambivalence, and this somewhat forensic interest in the places where representation fails, as signs that the present moment is neither modernist nor postmodernist in the usual senses. The present moment is concerned with a resurgence of representation, but as a ruin. Representation is no longer capable, adequate, comprehensive, or systematic: it lacks what Robert Williams calls “systematicity.”

James Elkins

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Sol LeWitt is gone (to the heaven).

Much has been written on Sol LeWitt ´s work. Instead of adding something that others can better say I prefer just to reproduce his Sentences on Conceptual Art (First published in 1969), that became a key moment on the idea of art today. The structures he explored on his works derived from elements of the cube and its drawings on wall redefined the parameters of the art in years 70, and continue to influence the artists of the new generations for their simplicity and for their Metaphysical aura. It´s interesting for us, digital artists, to see how the concepts of LeWitt can be explored (and extended) in the work of programmers-artists like Casey Reas . About the possibility that Sol left to the heaven - and not to the hell - I assume it due the "Clarity, beauty, playfulness. Simplicity, logic, openness. The words that come to mind when describing the work of Sol LeWitt resonate with essential aesthetic and intellectual values. His works are straightforward and legible. Yet, upon cl...

Four quotes on the conquest of space

"Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival." Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, Skylife, 2000. "We must turn our guns away from each other and outwards, to defend the Earth, creating a global and in space network of sensors and telescopes to find asteroids that could destroy our planet and create the systems to stop them. It makes no sense to dream great dreams while waiting to be hit by a train." Buzz Aldrin and Rick Tumlinson, Ad Astra Online, 2006. "The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to spa...

What Counts Now is an Attitude

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. - Mark Rothko Very seldom do we find that algorithmic artists have an eye on reality. In fact, most artists of our medium are very reluctant to abandon the vain belief that "beauty" is the only goal achievable by art. But how do we work exclusively for "beauty" in the context of political violence, terrorism and childhood trauma? How can the beautiful-only forms be made visually appealing in these times of sexual vulgarization and AIDS? It's clear isn't it, that art isn't rolling over an empty and free road of pure beauty anymore, but instead, a major issue among artists now is how to reconstitute beauty in a contemporary context of fear and social deception? I strongly believe that fractals are a useful tool for making the hidden, visible, but I als...

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