Pedro MORALES Mobile Tagging Art
SIGN OF THE TIMES Mobile Tagging Art Installation Pedro MORALES
Aztec codes, QR-codes, Stereograms, 3D-Prints (PLA & ABS), PDF417. 6 panels 8’ x 7’. Variable measures. 2017-2018
To interact with the artwork you will need an app in your smartphone Please, install the app at http://www.neoreader.com/get-neoreader
For this installation, I use the aesthetics of fractals and geometric abstraction to investigate the ubiquity of mobile technology in today’s life. I propose the interaction with the viewer through the decoding of SIGNS OF THE TIMES in an installation that is, above all, a quest for beauty.
In 2010 I coined the term “Mobile Tagging Art� to define the artistic expression that uses scanning, decoding, and reading out geometric shapes to reveal content, without sacrifice of the aesthetic engagement.
Using the camera of a mobile device to re-interpret numeric codes, Mobile Tagging Art gives artistic meaning to the fastgrowing technology of mobile internet: geometric symbols that carry tags and induce communication with a cell phone.
The proposal is based on the impact of 2D coding on life in the early 21st century: everything and everyone bearing contents and meanings in all possible combinations.
As geometrical 2D codes have become part of almost every domain of life, fed by an incessant flow of data in real time to find information faster, they have also raised a generation of impatient consumers. My installation uses these 2D codes to make the spectator pause and be captivated by the beauty evident in their geometric weaving. My ultimate interest lies in the aesthetics of the geometric codes.
In SIGN OF THE TIMES, which aims to fill the gallery walls with an uninterrupted series of works with obvious visual continuity, a mesh is built to encourage interaction with the viewer via their mobile phones, and the technology of the binary codes, to find scattered data and information about today’s world and the most sought after URL’s in cyberspace.
SIGN OF THE TIMES enhances the experience of what social media does and extends it to a new format, a world of geometric art. This installation is composed by 6 modules (8’ x 7’) wich can be adapted to any given space.
Is technology bringing people together or drifting them apart? Is one question explored by the installation. Where will these advances take us? Can geometric codes make internet irrelevant one day? Could you scan a code to manifest physical reality?.
This installation is about exploring, learning and finding the beauty inherent in geometry and fractal geometry. Exploring motivates me, I am drawn to the unknown, the essence of my work is to be constantly exploring and finding. I force digital technology to do things it was not originally designed to. This is a craft that takes me beyond some barriers and beyond what’s apparent. I’d like to think that my geometric work humanizes technology, turns it into a warm form of human expression.
ART AND TECHNOLOGY: A gaze beyond Pedro Morales’ work By: Susana Benko
The integration of the rational and the emotional is necessary in any artistic appreciation. It requires attention, care, and most of all sensibility and information. This is indisputable as to the work of Venezuelan artist Pedro Morales (Maracaibo, 1958). Being in front of his work implies to see it and to think it with conscience. These actions, to see and to think, are important here since such an informed and active look allows us to appreciate in it unsuspected situations. As a matter of fact, this is a work that pertains to reason and senses, being carried away by the pleasure of the limitless relationship between art and technology and by the ecstasy before the presence of beauty.
A Harmonious and Necessary Relationship Maybe the presence of a set of “glazes”, “meshes”, or “laces” installed in an exhibition space is enough to contemplate and assimilate their beauty. It is what happens at the exhibition Signs & Symbols, Mobile 1
Tagging Art because, without a doubt, the pieces are beautiful. Displayed like tapestries, they stand out for their “drawing” as if they were a fabric of filaments, formed by small panels whose invariable forms repeat themselves following a determined geometry pattern. Some of these “meshes” vary according to the type of weave; they may change in color, or by contrast of blacks and whites. Each of them, seen together as a whole, present in turn a particular geometric composition. All is part of the formal values of each piece that we optically perceive. However, we know that these are not their only values. There is something more…
In fact, each piece was conceived as a compendium of signs that need an audience in order to be revealed. Given the nature of these signs, each panel is filled with a meaning or a hidden referent. They consist of codes used in digital technology to communicate all kinds of messages, in this case, selected by the artist using Internet links. Each of these codes graphically conceived in 2D (in two dimensions), are
known, according to its type and use, as QR codes, Aztec codes, Ultracodes and the PDF417. All of them may be scanned and decoded through a smartphone using a special application for it. Each code has been printed, however, in 3D, using a printer assembled by the artist to produce these pieces according to
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the characteristics determined by him. The reunion of these printed panels makes up a mesh and together they form an installation, creating thus an atmosphere in the exhibition room.
To create this geometric and at the same time communicational compendium, the artist uses digital technology to put into practice the essential principles established in fractal geometry; which consists of the study of the constant and invariable geometric aspects of an object or image, even when there is a change in size or scale. In other words, fractal geometry analyses the regularity between an object and its parts, a regularity that repeats itself on different scales. Pedro Morales calls it auto-similarity because: ‌the more you penetrate into the work; you find more of the same. Then, the artist appeals to the geometric elements that are regular and constant in the codes he uses, elements that are repeated without changing, regardless of the scale, color, or space where they are used. His work is clearly, an analogy with fractal geometry. His
main objective is unveiling the intrinsic beauty of the codes’ geometry. In summary, it is about the harmonious relationship, necessary and at the same time aesthetic between the artistic forms derived from the digital language in a recurrent reiteration and similitude according to the fractal structure principles.
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Multiple Significances The audience, through their smartphone, explores beyond the formal appearance of the work because this
is how they discover the messages (or links) that these codes hold. The smartphone and the image decoder, instantly open a web page, which refers to a particular topic. In this way, Morales searches the participation of the audience, an interaction that begins as an individual act, yet evolves into a collective gesture. Curiosity, amazement, and expectation before the unknown, generate a sense of involvement within the audience which turns an abstract geometric composition, into multiple and limitless readings. The artist may change the links of these codes depending on the context and circumstances. In Dallas, for instance, they may be interested on a page dedicated to job search. But the audience may also scan other codes where they may find links about more global issues, such as controversial aspects of American or international
politics; complex subjects like power and sex; sex in adolescents, or, the effects of social media on people’s behavior, among many other topics.
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Stereograms Despite the fact that the use of digital means is frequent in contemporary art, it must be said that Pedro Morales is the only artist in Venezuela that uses the geometry of the digital codes as the basis of his work;
which is precisely the foundation of his series Mobile Tagging Art, in which our vision is extended through the telephone window. Another example is his Stereogram series. The predominant element is the vision by using anaglyph lenses (or 3D lenses), which have a different filter for each eye (red and blue). Morales’ works consist of two-dimensional images that may be seen as three-dimensional through these lenses. The artist has made stereograms in two different ways: by adding elements (plastic eyes, silk flowers, etc.) in the aim of creating, almost in a handcrafted manner, virtual volumes by using some applications (3Dmax, Maya and Truespace) or, as we can see now, by moving the images position. In this way they look as if they were displaced in two positions; the red or blue dyes and the use of the 3D lenses facilitate the illusion of volume through an optic overlap. For this occasion, he makes pieces much more hybrid since he conceives the anaglyph stereograms using Aztec or QR codes in pieces materialized through three-dimensional print. The result: a sort of fabric that allows, once more, a gaze beyond, towards topics apparently invisible but which
appear through the optic illusion in consonance with technology.
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The Extended Gaze The essential axis of Pedro Morales’ work lies in the search of transcendence. Its geometry promotes the entrance to the virtual world, which cannot be seen; but that exists, and touches us in many ways in our daily life. From there comes, the codes, the reiterations in the fractal logic, and of course the extreme stimulation of our senses. It is an unusual way of perceiving beauty, which implies a greater opening and depth in our perceptual capacity. To achieve this means to enter in the deepest fiber of our vision and understanding,
turning the communication into a work of art. Or, conversely, it might be seen from the opposite perspective: to create from the geometry of the codes, a communicational space that, because of its beauty, turns into a place for contemplation.
Susana Benko Caracas, February 2018 Curator and art researcher. Member of the International Association of Art Critics. Editorial Coordinator in Venezuela of Art Nexus magazine.
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Lives and works between Houston U.S. & Versailles. France. Pedro Morales (Maracaibo, VE. 1958) is a pioneer of digital art in Venezuela. “La Mirada�, (The Gaze), ca. 1989, made entirely in a 8088 PC with 256K RAM memory is one of the first works of digital art documented in the region. He represented his country at the 50th Venice Biennale with an iconic work, "CITYROOMS.NET", censored by his government. His investigations in the visual arts maintain an intimate approach, using everyday domestic events as a background for his digital work. He has explored his vision of the painting within the painting with fractal geometry, stereography, its virtual volumes loyal to its digital nature. 3D vision has been extensively researched by Morales for more than 20 years. The two-dimensional codes popular on mobile phones have been dismembered by Morales, experimenting with new materials and decipherable techniques with a mobile phone. The 3D pieces come from printers assembled by the artist. Part of the interactivity with his work is mobile connectivity, each code carries a personal message, URL or feelings. PEDRO MORALES.
b. 1958, Maracaibo. Lives and works in Houston U.S.A SOLO SHOWS: 1997-2018 http://pedromorales.com 2018 Signs & Symbols. The Museum of Geometric and MADI Art. DALLAS. US. 2014 Manuel de Civilité. Maëlle Galerie. Paris Erotic Embroideries. Espace MEZCLA. Rouen. FR. 2012 Haciendo bien, haciéndolo bien. Unidad Educativa Estadal Eugenio Pignat D´Bellard 2011 De redes y Cadenas. Galería D´Museo. Caracas. 2007 Bordados Porno. Galería D’museo. Caracas. 2003 Cityrooms Venice Biennal. GROUP EXHIBITIONS: 2018 Art Lima, Peru. CARACAS RESET. La Colonie. Paris. LIBERTATEM Cloître des Billetes. Paris. 2017 Biennial: Origins in Geometry. The Museum of Geometric and MADI Art. DALLAS. 40 Years of Geometry, GraphicArt Lima. 2016. ART LIMA. Peru. CARAVAN ART FORUM 2016, KUTAISI GEORGIA. ART VILNIUS LITUANIE. TRANSDIVERSO. ODALYS GALERIE. MADRID.
2015. ART LIMA. Peru. ART VLINIUS. LITUANIE. ART RIGA. LETONIE. 2014. ART LIMA. Peru. BYOB. Paris. BIT FORM. Galerie Nery Marino.Paris. 2013. ART LIMA. Peru. Fia Caracas. VE. 2012. PERSPECTIVES ON LATIN AMERICAN ART. Imperial Museum of Beijing. CONTAMINADOS. SALA MENDOZA. Caracas. KIAF Seoul. South Korea. SHANGHAI Art Fair. China. PINTA. New York. FIA Caracas.VE CARACAS JULIO 2012. 2011. ART SHANGHAI. Shanghai. FIA. Caracas. ARTBO BOGOTA. 2010. Maquinico. Museo de arte contemporáneo del Zulia. Maracaibo, VE. Shanghai art Fair. China. Una mirada al Lago. CAM. Maracaibo. ART SHANGHAI. Shanghai. ART MIAMI. Miami. ARTBO. Bogotá. FIA. Caracas. http://www.pedromorales.com/pdf/cv.pdf
SIGN OF THE TIMES Mobile Tagging Art Installation Pedro MORALES
info@pedromorales.com