Waving

Between the 4th and the 6th of November 2022 I attended a conference called Waving, organized by the department of intermedia art of the Art Academy in Krakow. I wrote and designed this small contribution to explore the theme of the conference as a call for action.

Waving as a verb relates to a new insight where the ultimate model of the universe in natural science pictures the All as a projection of informational modulated energy waves emanated by a cosmically horizon on the time-space continuum. The origins of the whole universe can be reduced to a two-dimensional model on a cosmological horizon where information is gathered and grows in complexity with time. Following this theory, everything we can experience in our physical reality can be reduced to vibrating algorithms that keep fractalizing in seemingly random complexity over time. In this context, humankind is living in a matrix where everything is the product of mentally modulated vibrations and where the degree of consciousness of an object depends on the complexity of the underlying algorithm. In this scheme, the more complex algorithms are feeding upon the simpler ones. The degree of our understanding of the cosmological horizon also sets the scale of the universe we can observe. In this sense, future events could already be influencing the present, depending upon the scale of the applied horizon.
The Tao of Physics is inside the artistic community elevated to an almost biblical status due to its comprehensive approach of the latest insights into the structure of the reality.
The emergence of new technologies also changed the ways the artistic activity is conducted. There is a growing insight into the binary matrix of the everchanging brain and how technology is changing the ways we perceive and give shape to our reality. The human condition is not anymore perceived as something that stands above the reality, but as a phenomenon that is part of the reality. This is even more valid for the artistic community.
In this context Artur Tajber pronounced: “Art into society, society into art”. Tajber is a conceptualist who likes to apply general tendencies upon a particular object and mixes that with a dose of artistic activism.

Artur and the Knights of the Rectangular Table. Pen on paper L 46 x H 31 cm by Shaharee Vyaas (2023). Artur Tajber has engaged in performance since the 1970’s, sporadically working with the table as a friend and object to explore an acute awareness of the body in conjunction with a deep contempt for the circumstances, bureaucracies and establishments which plague and agitate collective and subjective consciousness.

The artistic concept of waving tries to emulate these insights into the artistic praxis. In this context the geometrical language is considered to be more communicative in comparison with the logical or algebraical formulas.
Piotr Madej illustrated how rhythms and oscillations are breaking out their musical context to become perceived as an intermedia phenomenon. He gave examples of geometrical designs based upon a algorithmically interpretation of sound, or vice versa, how sound can be generated by an algorithmically interpretation of movements.

Software codeveloped by Elaine Chew yielded this visualization of a tonal analysis of P. D. Q. Bach’s Fugue No. 6 from The Short-Tempered Clavier

The most controversial topic was how the latest evolutions in the information technology introduced the artificial intelligence as a new player into human society, and by consequence, also into the artistic community. Not only are AI’s producing a wide variety of digital art: due to their almost inexhaustible capacity of self-correction through feedback, they do it often better than most humans. By many artists the AI’s are experienced as an existential threat and plagiarists, while others are experimenting with the new horizons AI’s are opening for the human perception and the artistic praxis.