JT          Federico, I think it might be interesting for museum visitors to know that this black wave – Geometric Death Frequency – 141 (GDF141) – is the second iteration of the work. The original idea(→p.36) was a free-form wave rendered in aluminum plates: bright shiny aluminum plates stacked up, the wave crashing up into and through the building. GDF141 is a contained wave, more dense, somehow crystalline. Instead of reflective of light, it’s consuming of light, made of black spheres instead of flat plates. There are many formal differences in the work, and I’d like you to tell me about them.

FD          At the beginning there was an abstract wave form, but over time I decided to deepen the idea so that the sculpture isn’t just a simulation of some random fluid movement or velocity, but also contains a sort of code. If you have a seed that is going to become a tree, you can’t see the tree in the seed, though it is there. You need to add energy to the seed, and let it grow. And when you see a person, the person is made of a genetic code, even though you can’t see the code itself. Soin the same way, I didn’t want this sculpture to be superficial in terms of aesthetic. I wanted a code to be imprinted deep within it.As for the surface, initially it was supposed to be smooth, but now we have black spheres because I wanted to make it more subtle, to make it look more like the movement of light. Light is something that enables us to see. Light is made of particles. In the sculpture, light particles were replaced by black spheres. So they represent the fluid movement of light, like a wave, as much as they represent the motion of fluids. There is a parallel between light and water; the turbulent movement of light is similar to the movement of the particles of water. They are basically molecules that move in the same way as light does. In this specific project, I wanted the sculpture to somehow grow or flow out of the space that it is located in because the space itself gives energy to the sculpture. That’s why we took photographs of MASS MoCA and analyzed them. The origin of this work is a photograph of the MASS MoCA entrance courtyard– the same place the sculpture now sits.Let me explain the photographs: as light hits the surface behind the lens in our eyes, an image is created of the world around us. A camera lens works in a similar way as our eyes, and a camera body like our brain. A photograph is a record of reflected light at a specific point in time. The photos of light energy hit the photosensitive plate of the camera, and are recorded as a “picture element” or pixel with each pixel containing data about the amount and quality of light particles that make up that small part of the image. A fixed recording of those light conditions on a photosensitive surface replaces the actual space. Time and light are stopped – if they can be stopped at all. This stopping of time represents death. If we look at a photograph, parts of the image, or pixels, are lighter in shade, some are darker. With software, these flat pixels can be converted into three-dimensional spheres. Using this software, I created a code that converted pixels, which describe the lighter parts of the photographs, into “fast” spheres; they bounce higher and move faster when stimulated by energy. The darker elements of the photograph are slower, less reactive, and therefore remain lower in the sculpture. Through another computer simulation, these pixels-turned-3D spheres (which are called “voxels,” by the way, or “volumetric picture elements”) can be energized like a wave. The entire simulation is driven by a code. It is actually the code that makes it possible for a living form to be born again from something that was dead.

I wanted to say one more thing concerning the black color that we chose. I’ve always thought a lot about how to compare or attribute a color to velocity, to something that is not visible because the faster something goes, the less you see it. Velocity drains color. I found out that the early 20th-century Suprematists also used black and white to represent speed – they reached the same result independently. If light had only one single color, there would be no matter, and therefore we wouldn’t be able to touch it.

JT

You equated the lens of a camera to an eye and, in some ways, the camera body itself to a brain. You noted that the moment a photo is taken, that moment of stoppage is a kind of death. I once read that ten times as many neuron connections run from the brain to the eye as run from the eye to the brain. In other words, what we see is driven more by what we know, and what our brain allows us and guides us to see, than by any purely optical phenomenon, which is why, for example, they believe that children see very few things at birth. A baby’s eyes and optical nerves are developed, but their brains are not, and therefore they do not yet see. You have to learn how to see. How does the interconnection of seeing “what the mind already knows,” to paraphrase Jasper Johns – how does that thought enter into your work?

FD

As a society, we tend to create recordings because we are afraid of death. We create a parallel brain in the form of image repositories; thanks to this, we can move forward. Our bodies are not immortal. I’m drawing a parallel between photography and our brains because when we see something new we must compare it to known structures, to shapes that we can relate to. This actually makes it possible for us to understand, to live. Without a reservoir of information that we have in our minds – with photographs, books, and films – without this transfer of information we wouldn’t exist. Information fields also create matter. Even our interview now is creating a web of energy, creating new information and images, and these connections create one big information field. I would like to share my theory, which makes me happy in my own life, with you: The future creates the present, and the way you live when you’re 80 influences your first year of life, which leads toward the positive approach of assuming responsibility over your life.

JT

So we create the past, just as we create the future! I’d like to ask more about this “code.” You mentioned in your first answer that parts of
the encoding of this sculpture allow lighter color pixels to rise higher in the wave, since they move faster, and the darker pixels remain lower. I’m sure that even more complicated coding rules come in to play. Are all the coding rules based on actual physical properties, or do you apply whimsy? I’m wondering, as you transform this flat photograph of the museum’s front courtyard into a 3-dimensional sculpture, and as you’re manipulating the data tables to generate the location of these “3D pixels” – at what time does the image fall apart? At what moment in your manipulation did the original courtyard picture become illegible? Was there that moment, or did you immediately apply a whole set of algorithms and rules that erupted immediately into this wave?

FD

When you look at a photograph, it is flat. In the same way, when you start off with a sculpture, it is flat. Here we are reconstituting a 3D space from a 2D surface according to an algorithm: the intensity of light of a pixel defines the position and velocity of a point, a “voxel,” which is then represented by a small black sphere in the sculpture. The assembled spheres create a wave. At least that was the first idea, but I thought that was too simple, that there would be too much of the photograph still visible in it; so I decided to add in more turbulence, more fluid movement: our world is created from turbulence and is full of fluid movement. To do that, I applied to the photographic data a simulated model of fluid motion. Each light particle, as represented by sphere, was treated as if it were a water molecule, and then “shaken.” I added this fluid dynamic action one bit at a time, interpolated, frame by frame, second by second. It was in frame 141 of the simulation that the photograph disappeared in the wave, and that’s the moment I froze it.

JT Tell me – you “stopped it at frame 141.” What does that mean?

FD The simulation starts from zero and could go on in perpetuity according to the algorithm – if the computer had unlimited operating memory. When I was observing the results of the simulated fluid dynamic, I chose to freeze it at frame number 141. I decided that from an aesthetic point of view, that was the instant the original image was totally subsumed by wave action. This may contribute to the debate over whether an object created without any human touch can still be called a work of art: it was namely the selection of the particular frame that constituted the (only) direct human input into the piece, the artist’s choice.

JT You’ve combined a Duchampian stoppage with a LeWittian instruction. Federico, this piece, your whole body of work, it’s almost always about transformation, transformation of color into light or light into motion, cellular growth, and transformation between speeds as measured in velocity. In your work, matter is always becoming energy; energy is becoming matter. Your work lives in a state of constant transformation,to some extent. Yet, obviously, when visitors approach this work, they only see a static piece of sculpture. It sits there beautifully arrested in the courtyard of the museum. It does not move or change. So how important is it to you that the viewers, the people who will come to know this work, also come to know the back story, the story that began with a photograph of the very place on which it sits, the story about the way you created these algorithms and applied 3D computer simulations to a photograph to alter it, the story of you stopping at frame number 141 because it looked right to you? How important is it to you that the visitor comes to know all that? I’m interested both from a philosophical point of view but also just museologically, in terms of when and how much of this back story is communicated to our patrons.

FD I don’t want to burden visitors with some complex process. This is something they can read in the leaflet or the book. What is essential is the aesthetic perception of the sculpture. We ourselves should be satisfied intellectually and philosophically over how
it was created. It is not just some geometric game created by a computer, because you have a lot of art generated in this way. Rather it is a site-specific sculpture. The place itself creates the sculpture in a way, but it is certainly not important for the visitor to know that in advance. The viewer does not need to know about the technology of creation; it is the aesthetic aspect that matters. That leads me into
one of your other questions. It is actually important that this work is based on an algorithm, and it is not something that could have been handmade. One reason is time because it would take maybe 10 or 20 years to make it by hand. There were almost half a million spheres to assemble precisely. And besides, it wouldn’t be as exact if made by hand. And that’s also a reason I chose a robot to make it, because robots can best understand pure data. This is a data sculpture, after all.

JT That’s interesting about the lack of human touch. You said once, if I may quote you, “At the age of 15 I painted the entombment of Christ based on Caravaggio’s original. I realized I could not rival the great Masters using traditional techniques. I could never surpass them as far as transferring the real world to the surface of the painting. When I later splashed canvas with paint as Pollock did, I saw no direction there either. What I wanted was to picture the visible within the invisible, the audible within the inaudible. This abstract technique, as I fathomed it that very moment, shall accompany me the rest of my life. And at that particular moment I decided to sink into the depth of the abstract worlds of energy, form, sound, and thought.” This piece seems consistent with that line of thinking, and it has to do with substituting alternate means of production to represent deep, complex realities. I’m still wondering, though, Federico, as you’re working on these works and thinking about them, are you still sketching? Do you draw?

FD I don’t want to boast, but I have always wanted to achieve something as good as, or better than, the Masters, in terms of capturing deep realities. Caravaggio was creating something that was unacceptable at the time, according to society and the Church. His imagery went against the dogma of the time. He wanted to picture something that was true and real; that’s what connects me to him. What also connects me to him is the work with light, the effort to picture what cannot be seen. And yes, I still do sketches. It is important to me. It is the beginning of every project – I make sketches at different phases. In the same way that I don’t want to burden the visitors with technology, I like to use my hands in the initial phase of a project when thinking about the first ideas, because this is the most direct way to capture those first flows of energy. That is also why I use ink painting in my sketches.

JT MASS MoCA is the home of a body of work by another artist, Sol LeWitt, who also did not personally touch many of his final works of art. He would create a set of algorithms and instructions and have them executed by others, sometimes very skilled assistants, sometimes by interested amateurs. But Sol also was interested in the mark of the hand, as well. He would sometimes have walls prepped and sanded by hand rather than by machine so that you could feel the surface of the irregular plaster. Obviously his work with graphite and color pencils carries the marks of a human being.In some ways your work has a similar structure. You give rise to an idea, you create an algorithm, you then code it and project it into a data stream. You meticulously remove the sense of human touch. In fact, one time you wrote something that said, “Art is created without contact to a human hand. Humankind has touched the actual visual boundary and limits of the human body.” And you equated this process of a ‘touch-less’ art with, for example, the way a crowd stays in contact during a techno-dance, following the vibe of the music and the movement of their bodies, but never touching. Touch-less dance. Touch-less art. Talk a little bit about that, Federico.

FD What really connects me to Sol LeWitt is the architecture and energy of the space. Every space sends out some geometric parameters; for example, the lines that were created in response to the space – to the doors, to the floor, to the windows of the space. This is an art and architecture of space and energy. We share that interest. In the Middle Ages, windows were used to let the light in, and nobody thought of looking out at the world through them, as we do nowadays.
Now about the transfer of information and touch- less art, touch-less dance. I came to this idea when I was thinking about how society has come to rely on the transfer of information. Before having technology for recording, we used to transfer information through voice, touch, or dance. There are still some tribes in the world (in Brazil or Papua New Guinea, for example) that use these ways of transferring information –
dance or speech – because they do not record in writing. These people are somehow communicating through the ritual of dance. We have our own rituals: physics, mathematics, science. These are some of the new languages that we have today. But what we have been doing for millions of years is still part of us; for example, in the form of dance. Earlier, touch was used to express or transfer emotional information. Now these modes of communication are moving elsewhere; for example, the internet. It is perhaps no longer necessary to touch while dancing. To pick up on what I said about rituals, one big ritual of today’s world is sports. For example, when you have a soccer championship or some Formula One races, you have one billion people who are suddenly joined together in a particular moment, thanks to technology. Thanks to television, they are watching the same match, and when a goal is scored, one billion people live through the same emotional outburst simultaneously. So this is a new phenomenon that used to be only local. We are now connected in this global ritual, thanks to this touch-less optical highway.

JT For the last question, I want to get back to GDF141. Why did you decide to contain the wave? Again, in your earlier thinking, the wave was free- form. In this final manifestation, the wave is boxed in a seemingly invisible container. Why?

FD The answer is simple. The wave could, in theory, fill the whole courtyard. It could wash over the whole museum (maybe we should do that sometime!). Here we select only parts of the reality. This is simply part of the simulation, a sample. In reality this wave actually takes place all around. We all create our own cuts from the larger reality, which makes it possible for us to survive because if we were feeling everything, seeing everything, we would just go crazy. But, of course, within 10, 20, or 30 years, we could fill up the whole museum. I’m certainly not against this idea.(laughter)
If you look at the computer model, that will show a greater part of the simulation. Sometime I would like to show a simulation of the entire event.

JT I look forward to seeing it, Federico. Thank you.