By Laura
Cristina Urrutia Aldrete and Patricia Gabriela Díaz Suzarte
Arcangel
Constantini was born in Mexico in 1970. He names himself a "Technology
Hacker." Constantini is an artist, curator and promoter of new arts. His
work is mainly audio-visual and tries to experiment with it in a ludic way. His
starting point is the old iconography and the first digital systems to build an
evolving an interactive audiovisual structure.[1]
He has been curator of the Tamayo Museum and has been granted with the FONCA
scholarship.
Atari
Noise is one of the most famous pieces of Arcangel Constantini. The idea is
simple; he tries to recycle obsolete technology, in this specific case the
Atari 2600, i.e. one of the gaming devices, which is now obsolete. Atari Noise is the "reflection of a
media culture in which the necessary hardware is available today as scrap used
in any home." [2]
The artist hacked the "original
programming"[3],
so that the intervention resulted in the generation of video and audio
standards. This piece was presented during the Bending and Hardware Hacking Happening Festival in Tokyo, Japan and
Mexico City, simultaneously. Mario de Vega traveled to Japan and presented his
project SPK ® Live and helped with the
installation and communication between the two systems (operated by Ivan Abreu
and Arcangel Constantini), who controlled it remotely via arduino, pd,
flashserver and circuits. The result was a video of almost six minutes, which
shows colored lines and anachronistic way to these, different sounds, elements
that show, a manual intervention (hacking), and an intervention of video and
sound.
Among the concepts proposed in the book The Postmedia Era by José Luis
Brea, it is possible to apply the concept of Multimedia. This being defined as "a production that
incorporates elements developed in different media." [4]
While it is true that the main base of the experiment is the Atari console, it
is also true that to perform the real-time activity at distance, many devices
were indispensable.
Apparently, Brea has no term that could classify an artistic expression
of this type, that is, one that transforms obsolete technologies in one way or
another. “We could exclusively call media art to those practices that rather
than producing objects 'for' a given media,
have the task of production ‘of a specific media', autonomous. Those works in
which the object is itself the medium.” [5]
In addition to this approach, we can understand Atari Noise as a universal language, because it speaks to the whole
society, the images and sounds can be interpreted consistently regardless of
the geographical location of the person. In words of Brea: “Imagine a world in
which objects talk to each other, like elements or cogs in a global machine.
The language spoken is technical. Precisely
what is required is fidelity in the exchange code. The technique is the Esperanto
of the objects system.” [6]
References
Tecniarts, Arcangel Constantini: Consideration About Digital
Culture (Arcángel Constantini: reflexiones sobre la cultura digital). Date: March
12, 2013,. http://tecniarts.com/cultura-digital-arcangel-constantini/
Escribano
Serrano, José, Art and Videogame. The Videogame as an Artistic Tool. An Approach to the new Cybernetic Language and Its Influence
in the Beauty Arts (Arte y videojuego.El videojuego como herramienta
artística. Una aproximación al nuevo lenguaje
cibernético y su influencia en las Bellas Artes), Spain,
2007.
Brea, José Luis, The
Postmedia Era (La era postmedia), Creative Commons, 2009.
Constantini, Arcángel, Arc Data. Date: March
10, 2013, http://www.arc-data.net/ Constantini, Arcángel, Atari Noise. Date: March 10, 2013, http://www.atari-noise.com/
[1] Tecniarts, Arcangel Constantini: Consideration About
Digital Culture (Arcángel Constantini: reflexiones sobre la cultura digital). Date: March 12,
2013,. http://tecniarts.com/cultura-digital-arcangel-constantini/
[2] Idem.
[3] Escribano Serrano, José, Art and Videogame. The Videogame as an
Artistic Tool. An Approach to the new Cybernetic Language and Its Influence in
the Beauty Arts (Arte y videojuego.El videojuego como herramienta artística.
Una
aproximación al nuevo lenguaje cibernético y su influencia en las Bellas
Artes), Spain,
2007, p.83
[4] Brea, José Luis, The Postmedia Era, Creative
Commons, 2009, p.7.
[5] Íbid., p.16
[6] Ibid, p. 121.
2 comentarios:
I like the idea of re-purposing the use of old technology to communicate a visual response. I am not sure "why" it is referred to as "hacking".
I love the idea of making art with repurposed technology. I hadn't heard about this artist before, he's a lot of fun! I never played Atari games, but I owned very early Macs. I love music made from early computers too. Thanks! -sam smiley
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