25/11/2004
Jose Manuel Berenguer
Metronom, Barcelona
Mega kai Mikron is a project of amplification and decodification of sounds and images, an artistic speculation beyond Science and Religion on the Infinite and what doesn't have limits. The main concepts in this installation are a microscopic approach to circuits that carry out a function that can be appreciate macroscopically, and the contrast of these two aspects of reality.
Mega kai Mikron
Mega kai Mikron (Mega kai Mikron, “The Big and the Smallâ€) is a project of amplification and decodification of sounds and images, an artistic speculation beyond Science and Religion on the Infinite and what doesn’t have limits.
The main concepts in this installation are a microscopic approach to circuits that carry out a function that can be appreciate macroscopically, and the contrast of these two aspects of reality.
The title of the installation comes out of meditations of artistic nature on the approach of scientific and philosophical languages to the concept of Infinite, a concept that has not been fully integrated into all the fields of Thought, nor has it transcended, in spite of the undeniably brilliant results of centuries of reflection.
The impossibility of a holistic definition of the World, at least as seen from a human perspective; the acceptance of objects of which we can neither assert or deny their existence, even though are forced to accept it as certain; the contradictions that come up as the instruments with which we question nature become more accurate, etc., are some of the several questions that the artist poses on the Infinite. Knowing that the Infinite is not a formal resource, invented so that we can avoid explaining all that seems to go beyond our understanding, its acceptance reveals domains truly inaccessible to human reason.
For Berenguer, we need the Infinite to penetrate further in the understanding of the physical world; at the same time, it seems clear that the physical world does not contain it. We are of a discontinuous nature and allow ourselves the filigree of imagining continuity. Even more: we describe our dream of infinite smoothness through a tool, language, which has traditionally been considered by ourselves as a paradigm of discontinuity.
These meditations by José Manuel Berenguer give occasion for the allegory proposed by the central piece in the installation. Inscribed in silicon wafers –the flat supports for the production of microchips-, we find microscopic texts by authors such as Georg Cantor, Novalis, Giordano Bruno, etc., about aspects of the Infinite and continuity. These sentences are magnified by microscope lenses, registered by video cameras, processed by a computer and projected in 3D, on virtual 3D volumes that include an element that can be identified with the Infinite: the point of perspective.
In the same platform where the wafers and the several observation and recording devices –which allow us to see them micro and macroscopically- are placed, there are integrated circuits which emit, through loudspeakers, readings of the texts on the wafers. These sound emissions are generated depending on the presence of people nearby the installation, that are detected as “occurrences†that charge the system and that eventually produce a sound discharge that informs the computer and makes it change the visual information it receives from the wafers.
Therefore, the installation’s behavior is not totally independent of the audience. But it can’t be considered interactive, since the reactions are almost unpredictable and the visitor will not always be directly responsible nor aware of the response generated by his/her presence.
Mega kai Mikron includes another set of sentences, much larger, that come from very different sources and have been re-written by the artist. They all make reference to what, from being so big or so small, has to be considered in terms of what doesn’t have limits. The sentences don’t have a physical support, but they are inscribed in the computer and are added to the 3D material projected in the wall opposed to the previous projection.
This second projection is a perpendicular surface that advances towards the spectator and, based on a numerical approach to the electronic circuits that emit sound, is distorted in irregular bumps. The texts are projected, every 30 seconds, on this uneven plane in movement.
The project has had the collaboration of Dr. Salvador Hidalgo and Prof. José Millán, from the Centre Nacional de Microelectrònica (CNM-CSIC), in the conceptualization and development of the electronic circuits and silicon wafers.
Opening: Wednes1day, November 26, at 20:00 h.
Open Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 to 14 h. and from 17 to 20 h. Free entrance.
Central Gallery
Metrònom
C. Fusina 9, Barcelona