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Questions at an exhibition

Doubts and accuracies amid Claudio Castillo's work*

So is this Art?

The same old question arises in the galleries of the new vanguard, sprung from the unstoppable advance of new digital technologies.

As such, the question has never ceased to resonate, ever since the Impressionists unleashed, in the 19th century, a movement that seeks more and more freedom in sculpture, and a wide array of isms that are still with us today.

With the same words, the question challenged, for example, Renaissance and Romantic painters such as El Greco and Delacroix, when they proposed new forms and inspirations to paint reality as they saw and felt it.

Such is the dilemma of the perception and enjoyment of sculpture and art in general; it is as old as art itself. In the same way, the relationship of art and technology and their intertwined existence, as expression and instrument, this has been an essential part of the debate.

It was technology, the invention of photography, which forced artists, tired of shallow reproductions of reality, to subvert the traditional forms. Freed from such a compromise, they transgressed those forms and the human eye's perceptual mimesis, in order to create other, their own forms.

While painting had the task of faithfully reproducing surrounding reality, with beautiful artistry, photography helped open the doors to freedom, at the end of the 19th century, to those who began the never-ending path of experimentation and the free use of expressive forms.

It was a step against the flow, not only against the criteria of other artists and the majority of the critics, but also against the public's capacity and habit of appreciating art. Even today, the general public and some specialists have not completely recovered from the trauma. The same occurs in music, the closest art to painting. Most listeners have not recovered from the profound alterations and liberties introduced by atonal and dodecaphonic experimentation. It is also seen in the interpretive freedom of jazz, where a long Miles Davis solo or a Alan Berg creation never receive the same reception as a piano and orchestra piece by Tchaikovsky.

Something similar happens in painting. The public will admire a classical landscape with conviction and safety, and will also move their heads in polite approval but without conviction while observing Les demoiselles d'Avignon.

The public not only rejects the changing forms, it also tends to honor and prioritize the ability an artist has to reproduce reality, instead of celebrating his expressive capacity.

So, without having solved this problem, more than 100 years since the first impressionist exhibit, vanguard artists continue, lets be frank, to be poorly understood by the general public, and why not, by some specialists too.

Given the situation, we are surprised by technologies that open a path to a new type of art, the digital art, and in specific, software art.

Obviously, technology permitted the advance from primitive art to pictorial art, because it gave us better and more flexible material: supports, pigments, brushes. They all evolved and offered the artist diverse alternatives.

The recourse of returning to old techniques and material does not negate progress, and it has more to do with nostalgia than the rejection of technological advance.

But never before has the change of instrument and support been so violent and significant in the conceptual order, as in the case of artistic expression via digital means.

From a world manifested in atoms we have made a path to the world manifested in bytes, said Nicholas Negroponte. The rupture with traditional information has been so intense and shocking, it is difficult to reflect and comprehend the extraordinary capacity of digitalization.

The act of rejecting the artistic quality in digital creations is not separate from this fact.

Those who work with the written word don't usually think that their work travels through intangible means, that the manuscript of their novel becomes binary code on a hard drive, or even worse, in flash memory or a pen drive.

(Originally, I wrote this text in Courier, the same font of antique typewriters, and my version of Office simulates on the screen what a piece of paper looks like. It even has certain contours and texture. Microsoft helps alleviate the weight of the trauma.)

We don't yet give artistic credit to sounds the come from a synthesizer, when compared to an acoustic piano, unless the genre is of great popularity and impossible to interpret with traditional instruments.

We also spend lots of money to print material found on the internet, because we are not used to reading the screen, despite the clarity of our crystal liquid monitors.

We hesitate before accepting a document that is electronically guaranteed and certified.

Only time and the impeccable nature of progress to a more technologically advanced world, and the presence of generations that never wrote on a Remington, will give value and appreciate the products and creations of these technologies, with the authenticity they deserve.

The objections are many.

The possibility of falsifying a digital work of art is one of the great complaints. And it is a certain possibility.

But the falsification of any work of art has been a reality for centuries, and we are all aware of the constant effort against those fabrications. The new technologies that support this art, or this form of expressing art, have the task of providing security, which will surely be more effective that what we have today for facing traditional falsifications.

Another complaint: are we purchasing art or software? It is almost the same argument that arose when people started to paint on canvass instead of wood. Were they buying a piece of cloth?

Finally, the catalogue of objections includes one of more conceptual thought: it warns that digital art and software art increase a possibility that is disconcerting in the traditional sense, but could be one of the most interesting contributions and a way of satisfying the dreams and ambitions of many artists: that the work reproduces and regenerates itself over and over again in front of the artist, and therefore the spectator.

This is not the scenario that will cause less controversy and initial rejection. Despite the variations not always visible in art, as in painting, there has been a constant throughout its history: its immutable, inalterable, immobile, unique, and completed nature.

Once again, technique removes another curtain for creation and offers possibilities for further development of an art that in this case, not only discards traditional supports and adopts others (liquid crystal or plasma screens instead of canvas), not only discards traditional material (bytes, an endless array of colors, and software, instead of brushes, paint, acrylics and other pigments), but offers the possibility of constant renewal.

As Heraclitus stated "The static water of the lake is in contrast to the constantly renewed water of the river. No one walks in the same river twice". No one sees in the art of Claudio Castillo the same image twice.

On the wall and connected to a software generator, the work of art that the spectator observes is not what he saw or will see. The constant renewal becomes a celebration of imagination and a promise of constant revision of the impressions that arise from its contemplation.

It is the kinetic dream, which was only suggested by artists who insinuated movement, without achieving it. Kinetism was the illusion and intent of the new art. In the art of Claudio Castillo, the movement is the art.

And this work, as is the case in a vanguard movement, is continuity and improvement. Behind it, are the footprints of already classic artists who embraced new technologies with enthusiasm and creativity, like Nam jun Paik or Bill Viola, who opened unexpected paths and faced critical theoretical challenges with video and photography and digital alterations - creation thanks to the possibilities of digitalization - that were introduced as instruments for artists.

It also, in its own way, coincides, continues or improves upon the work of other vital artists in today's world of software art, which seeks its space in the world and marketplace.

One of its most interesting exponents today, John Smith -- notable for both his art and his thoughts on the art and technology nexus --, gives the warning: "I believe we should not forget that software art is also art, and it must work to define its place in the world of art."

It is therefore critical that the spectator overcome the shock and traditional doubts about an art form that is new and unusual, to fully comprehend the new possibilities of this aesthetic.

The observer will learn of extraordinary variables that will illuminate a universe of infinite contemplation and interaction with Claudio's art. The palm leaves on the screen will sway at the speed the wind is actually blowing, thanks to a wireless connection to the internet which relays information to the software that generates the art.

The tide rises and falls as it does in the real world, the moon displays the correct phase because the art work "knows" where it is and what time it is.

Or the artist will be able to introduce, on demand, images and context of a family or personal video, making the transition from the domestic to the world of art. The spectator will add to the art, take part in it, and he will become part of the work he now contemplates, converted into someone else, or himself, thanks to the complicity established by Claudio, the spectator and his family narrative.

Reality and the creation of reality will become entwined in a casual or planned succession in a wide array of images, from abstract compositions to flowers, water, herbs, roots, and trees, in endless variations and combinations that are as beautiful as they are unexpected.

It is a work of art in constant progression, incessant change and fluid dialogue with the spectator and the world around it, without regard to space or time or even categories: the family memory can be introduced as an artistic component, as can the outside atmosphere, or even news about a faraway nation or the ups and downs of Wall Street in real time.

It is the infinite work of art, with constant variables that require thousands, or millions of years to watch, integrated to the world of the internet, which is the world we live in, where nothing is identical to what will become, where nothing is below or on top of anything. The world of the artist, converted into the world of the spectator that will become the world of everyone, seen and narrated in a vibrant manner.

The traditional narrative is altered. There is no linear story line, unpredictability, chaos, the non linear rules. The before does not necessarily occur before the after, nor the cause prior to the effect. The digital world does not occur as it is narrated: it occurs as in a dream.

Beyond the qualities of each form of its objects, the work of Claudio Castillo and its daily contemplation are a summary of the ineffable, changing, unreachable, and yet tempting mystery of life and death, birth and resurrection, of the limits and unending universe. The same mystery that captured the satisfactions and anxieties of man since his first day on Earth.