Systematic Modes of Disorder
Andr�s Ram�rez Gaviria
Shortly after exhibiting the installation between forms of representation and interpretation in the Medienturm, I was invited by one of the curators from the Kunsthaus Graz in Austria to develop a project for the BIX façade–a light and media installation designed by the Berlin-based architecture group realities:united that covers the entire front of the museum with 930 fluorescent lights.
My project–still in development–is a data visualization and sonification project designed to translate textual data into abstract audio-visual animation sequences that are displayed and broadcast from the façade for the purpose of emphasizing the common assumption in network theory that indeed the whole is always more than the sum of its parts–a notable shift in scientific methodology that takes the focus away from reductionism and places it instead on the understanding of organizational patterns inherent to the phenomena being analyzed.
For this project, I have chosen to work with the principles of Gestalt theory as related to human perception. Grouped into the categories of similarity, proximity, closure, area, figure and ground, and symmetry, the principles of Gestalt theory are generally used to exemplify how context influences perception. I employ them as an underlying structure/syntax in the translation/encryption of textual data into abstract, geometric audio-visual animations.
Data Mapping
The text used as source material for the visualization and sonification is composed of two phrases. The first is taken from Roy Behrens’ book Design in the Visual Arts written in 1984 in which he discusses Gestalt theory’s influence on modern art and design. The second is an anagram made from the first.
Together they read: "more than the sum of its parts/a misshape of truth torments/"
The text is used as a self-reflexive statement to outline a basic assumption of Gestalt theory, namely that a whole is better described as "more than the sum of its parts." Since both phrases are composed using the same symbols (a, e, f, h, i, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, space, /) they can be regarded as quantitatively equal. Yet because these symbols are arranged differently in each phrase, both are qualitatively distinctive. The text thus self-explains the fundamental argument of Gestalt theory as written by Max Wertheimer in 1924: "There are wholes, the behaviors (meaning) of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but…by the intrinsic nature of the whole."
This argument continuously repeats in different forms throughout the project. First, as stated above, in the relations of the syntactic and semantic structure of the original text; second, in its encoded meaning, that is in the exhibition of abstract animations that refer back to the original text; and third, in the perceptual effects of the principles of Gestalt theory in which the animations/encryptions are based.
Data Encryption
The encoding of the data is realized through a cryptographic model which ascribes animated audio-visual sequences with progressive running times to each symbol of the alphabet plus a few extra characters.
Encoding the data into a difficult to decipher system of representation serves to further accentuate the relational character of the individual elements. Instead of conveying the message hidden in the data through a visual and sonic metaphor that users can quickly and easily comprehend, the project underscores the importance of the interrelationships between the units that define the whole by purposely subverting them. I believe such paradoxes are afforded within art projects.
