Thursday, July 24, 2008

Something i've been thinkning about

There is an inherent quality of digital media that lends itself to elaboration on the idea of abstraction, especially Minimalism, as a practice. It allows for an ability to further the dialogue about the reduction of form, action and idea to their most basic elements, pure information, which approaches the point most near non-existence; a space similar to that of traditional (written) language.
I am pondering the similarity to the storage of information in the brain, as well as the dissipation of information in the brain. On the same note, but on a macro scale, there seems to be a parallel to information sent as wave-from (radio, light, etc.) and its atrophy as it traverses space away from Earth (or any other source.)
What function do the rate of demise and the ability to decode/translate/recycle have on a work of art's (or anything's) value? Is the value of a vehicle for communication married to its ability to be translated?

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Work in progress


Here is a work in progress that i am pretty excited about: I am videoing myself practicing (Zen)meditation for 30 minutes a day. The video (digital) is then transferred to an external harddrive for storage. The harddrive, with the video stored on it, is the final piece. I am using a Lacie brand designer (Niel Poulton) harddrive for its minimalist aesthetic. One of the things i am thinking about is the transformation of an action’s (or anything's) meaning when processed to a hyper-minimal state of existence. The use of Zen is interesting in that it is one of the major influences on minimalism to begin with, (i.e. John Cage), and still quoted persistently in minimalist design. To reduce a reductive process is to aim for a new nearness to Nothing. The image is of the harddrive (currently on a pedestal - this may be revised.) (As a sidenote, my benchmarks are measured in space (gigabytes), instead of time, and are 100GB, 250GB, and 500GB.)