Installation – studio Antimundo

Blister

r3n0 — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 15:28:00 +0000

Curator Sergi Rusca (fragment from his text for A Heavy Halo)

“In B L I S T E R, Oscar Santillán highlights the earthbound quality of A.I. systems. On a laptop screen, we see a video generated by a combination of neural networks and 3D software. The video is displayed in the very same laptop in which this digital aspect of the piece was originally made, and it is physically held by a metal structure filled with found wooden logs. The logs are evocative of our surrounding ecologies, and given their common burning for fuel, they too evoke what was perhaps the most important technology for our ancestors: fire. On the other side of the sculpture, two highly-detailed 3D prints reveal a trans-species presence composed of minerals, bones, biological and robotic elements, and undefined forms. By layering physical and synthetic realities together, B L I S T E R is an emphatic prompt to the obstinate Earthly relationship between the divergent systems that compose our planet.”

The Andean Information Age

r3n0 — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 15:28:54 +0000

Back in 2018 artist Oscar Santillán and curator Alessandra Troncone began a collaborative research on khipus, which explored some of the endless histories behind this material code. The resulting publication ‘The Andean Information Age’ (Bom Dia Publications, 2020) adds up another layer to the historical account, it envisions connections between this form of indigenous knowledge and emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality.

For thousands of years, knotted ropes called ‘khipus’ were used in the Andes to encode numeral and textual information.

Fragments of the publication later became the script for an audiovisual piece, with its own autonomy.

Departing from the same notion, the alignment of technological pasts and futures, Santillán used a microcomputer in order to hack an old slide projector. This allowed him to control the duration of every slide and to synchronize it with a soundtrack created for this piece.

‘The Andean Information Age’ becomes a near cinematographic work. Complementary, the images in the analog slides were produced by means of a 3D software.

These images, with a sci-fi energy, took inspiration from khipus and colonial chronicles. The result is a large vertical projection, made from a sequence of 80 slides, synced to an audio piece (28 minutes long).

Chewing Gum Codex

r3n0 — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 15:28:00 +0000

Astronaut Neil Armstrong holding a (Shuar) spear in the Amazon rainforest. 1976.

{PROCESS DOCUMENTATION}
In 1976 astronaut Neil Armstrong joined a scientific expedition to the Amazon; the main goal was to explore a large cave called “Tayos” in the Ecuadorian side of the rainforest. Seven years prior he had become the first human to step on the moon. Along with many scientists, Ecuadorian soldiers in charge of the logistics, and a few members of the Shuar community (natives to that area of the rainforest), Armstrong ventured into this cave which encompasses hundreds of kilometers.

One of the Ecuadorian soldiers, Francisco Guamán, was closely following the steps of Armstrong. His only interest was to collect anything that would be discarded by the astronaut, “whatever I could get –he said– would become a valuable memorabilia” taken from one of the most famous people on Earth. It is not clear what type of items he expected, the truth is that a mundane piece of gum, which had been chewed by the astronaut, was all that he managed to gather.

After hearing rumours about this story, in 2018 the artist tracked down the family of Mr. Guamán –who had already passed away– to ask about it. The soldier’s granddaughter confirmed the story and proceeded to retrieve the little old gum from a box. She entrusted the artist with it.

For ‘Chewing Gum Codex’ human DNA, enclosed in the gum chewed by the astronaut, has been extracted and synthesized. This genetic material has been consequently inserted in the genome of plants, which are part of the installation.

Considering that plants deal better with zero-gravity conditions, which are extremely harsh for humans, ‘Chewing Gum Codex’ suggests the possibility of an interspecies astronaut as a plausible way for long-term traveling through outer space. In other words, in the future Mr. Armstrong could return to outer space, this time traveling inside plants.

Solaris

r3n0 — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 15:28:54 +0000

{PROCESS DOCUMENTATION}

For ‘Solaris’, sand gathered at the Atacama Desert was first melted becoming glass. This glass was then turned into photographic lenses. These ‘desert eyes’ were brought back to the Atacama desert and used to photograph its landscape.

The captured images go beyond representing the landscape; in ‘Solaris’, the desert is an observing subject rather than a passive object to be looked at. ‘Solaris’ takes its inspiration from the sci-fi classic of the same title, by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, which explored a potential type of intelligence that does not derive from a brain, but, rather, from the sea of a distant planet called ‘Solaris’.

SOLARIS (detail) One of the photographs taken at the desert through the lens made of the same desert’s sand. The ecological traces of the landscape, which are present as the desert sand was not purified at the time when it was melted becoming glass, distorts the resulting images.

Afterword

r3n0 — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:28:00 +0000

From the dozens of mistyped documents, which the artist scanned at the archive, he selected all the mispelled words (image on the left) and all the pencil crossings and scratches that Nietzsche made over these failed writings (image on the right).

This work combines two forking paths that emerged from the same documents; an approximation to the philosopher’s mistyped writings –already described– and a dance, which was motivated by Nietzsche’s own remark about spending hours teaching his fingers “to dance with the Malling-Hansen” typewriter. Faithful to the spirit of the research, for this second path the artist decided that it was Nietzsche himself the only one with full legitimacy to show his dance. Hence, from one of the philosopher’s original documents, Santillán tore off a tiny fragment that was about to fall off and gave it to a psychic medium in order to use it as a ‘psychic bridge’ to reach the philosopher in the afterlife and inquire about this matter. The piece of paper is displayed on a pedestal as part of the installation.

Due to his messy handwriting and sight complications, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche acquired a typewriter.

It was a Malling Hansen “Writing Ball”.

None of these models have survived.

Johanne, one of Rasmus’ daughters, even became a psychic medium

Nietzsche expected the typewriter to transform his way of thinking,

“It will enable me to write books that are the opposite of those I have written,” he predicted.

However, the typewriter was damaged during shipping which led it to produce typing errors.

The philosopher would try over and over to find a way to use it regardless

In his room, undisturbed, Nietzsche spent hours teaching his fingers “to dance with the Malling-Hansen”.

He wrote of dancing himself “as if something supernatural” echoed out of him.

Long after his death, a tiny piece of paper was torn from one of Nietzsche’s typed manuscripts.

Consequently a psychic medium used it to contact him and ask one question: What was your dance like?

Nietzsche dancing through the body of a psychic medium.