The inaudible in The Corporeal An Interview with...............................Ben
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Rubin
By Juan Sebastián Cárdenas* Throughout a career that has included notable expositions and
which shouldn’t be absolutely separate from regular art history.
projects carried out primarily in the United States, multimedia artist
Conscious of the existence of this fundamental, almost carnal
Ben Rubin (Boston, 1964) has managed to develop his work without
relationship that, for good or for bad, we have with technology, Rubin
appealing to the legitimizing mechanisms of the binomial
opts to explore more complex phenomena linked to the experience of
market/criticism, which explains both the rhetoric-free bent of his
interactivity and communication. If we had to choose a slogan, a
procedures and the sorry misunderstanding that has made him
dictum capable of marking the slant of his work, we would have to
virtually unknown in Spain. With bachelor’s degrees in Semiotics and
cite what Rubin himself wrote a few years ago about the origin of his
Computer Science from Brown University and a Masters in Visual
work Listening Post: “For years, I have thought about ways to hear
Studies from the Media Lab at M.I.T., Rubin might seem like the
inaudible phenomena, ways to map the observable world into the
classic example of a border-straddling artist, capable of joining two
sound domain.” It’s noteworthy that, amidst such versatility and
apparently dissimilar fields like the hard plastic arts and high
proliferation of resources, the phrase quoted above describes with
technology. Nevertheless, this apparent dichotomy between art and
great efficiency that which Rubin attempts to reveal to us in every
technique collapses entirely and his works operate in a sphere where
one of his works.
this supposed disconnect is skipped over for what it is, a false problem. On repeated occasions, Derrida complained of the prejudices that
Between August and September 2003, the artist presented Spin at the Seattle arts festival Bumbershoot. This work put in play a series of orange-colored wheels projected onto a net of transparent
surround techniques, especially those in which criticism reveals a
Plexiglas circles. The orange wheels –as much on the visual as the
nostalgic homily on the assumed natural origin –that is, the
sonic planes– were capable of acting individually or collectively, in a
pretechnicality– of humanness. Thus, despite being understandable,
constant movement of attraction and repulsion, of synthesis and
it’s curious how the inclusion of new technological media in the art
destruction. Despite lacking the social and communicational
field continues to incur resistance, because if this inclusion does
implications of other works, Spin was rich in its plasticity and
indeed represent an unprecedented formal challenge, it’s evident that
capacity of sensorial suggestion, two characteristics present in
it constitutes another chapter in the history of artistic techniques,
Rubin’s best pieces.
42 ARTECONTEXTO · DOSSIER