the Obsolescence by ProvocAction Art

the Obsolescence

the Obsolescence Site-specific installation, 157.6 x 118.2 x 5.73 inch, Compact Disc, steel wire, tensor cable, bearings, springs and wooden supporting structure.

It’s been 30 years since the Compact Disc was produced and commercialised for the first time in the world. For the first time, the Compact Disc revealed the unedited discrete numerical representation of our world. Nonetheless, for several years, several leading recording companies began having serious doubts as to this device’s longevity, considering it fairly obsolete. The irony is that the first advantage exalted by CD producers at the time was precisely its unlimited lifespan through time. In fact, it is constructed in polycarbonate and

aluminium, making it virtually indestructible, but also consequently non-biodegradable and therefore not easily disposed of. This installation is a celebration in regards to the capacity of mankind’s progress – which has known how to find within even those ingenuous solutions to benefit their own arts – but is moreover a warning and an occasion for reflection, with regards to the environment where he lives and the respect and care he should show it. Those who stand in front of this work, see themselves reflected in it. In observing is, they perceive themselves all together, in a singular perspective – instead of in the third person – by means of the fruits of recycling a monumental, albeit delicate, wall of over four thousand Compact Discs suspended in air, which make up the installation.

The public’s interaction with the structure isn’t limited to reflection, but continues with the manual rotation of the supports, already in turn moved by the wind, and with the suggestion of the infinite rainbows created by the sunlight. Once again ProvocActionArt makesnatural elements, in this case sunlight and the wind, theirs and arranges the metaphor of man who observes himself in his natural environment, through the obsolescence of his own technology.