Intersections - Nguyen Dang Binh

50
Gregory Garvey
Suprematist Composition V
9.75 inches X 9.75 inches X 5 inches
Interactive digital video
ARTIST STATEMENT
Suprematist Composition V explores the space between stillness,
expectation, surprise, and confirmation. Through the glass window
of a porthole, the viewer sees digital video of a black cross in
dramatic perspective, undulating slowly and silently. Opening the
window of the porthole triggers the display of a swimmer in motion.
Closing the porthole window triggers the redisplay of the “Suprematist
Cross.”
This work is part of a continuing series that re-investigates or remediates
the early 20th century reductionist impulse as seen in Russian
Suprematist art. Exploring the possibilities enabled by technologies
of interaction, Suprematist Composition V not only “refashions” a
prior media form, but also turns it on its head by including prohibited
subject matter.
For Kazimir Malevich, “the supremacy of pure sensation” was the
guiding principle and was best expressed by “non-objective” abstract
geometric forms (square, circle, cross). Malevich wrote in 1916:
“We will not see a pure painting before the habit to see in canvases
depictions of nature, Virgins or shameless Venuses is abandoned...”
However, pure sensation gives way to expectation inspired by the
moving image and furthered by interactivity. Although the visual syntax
of narrative film is avoided, a story is told as the viewer constructs
a new experience, lasting as long as he or she wishes. Functional
brain imaging reveals that as we gaze at either male or female semi-
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CONTACT
Gregory Garvey
Quinnipiac University ClA-1-316
275 Mount Carmel Avenue
Hamden, Connecticut 06518-1949 USA
greg.garvey@quinnipiac.edu
clad bodies, localized areas of the brain light up in response to this
“pure sensation,” leading to a cascade of associations, memories,
and emotions and physiological responses.
Noting the affinity between the work of Malevich and Kandinsky’s
Weisses Kreuz (White Cross) of 1922, lucy Flint observes: “The
cross is an evocative, symbolic form.” Today its evocative power
remains beyond “pure sensation.”
TECHNICAl STATEMENT
In this interactive digital video installation, a magnet reed switch
mounted on the porthole window frame is connected to the USB
port of the computer. When closed, it sends a mouse-down event,
and when opened, it sends a mouse-up event. The script handler
written in Macromedia Director lingo responds to a mouse-up event
by randomly selecting one of 10 digital video sequences. When the
script receives a mouse-down event, it returns to the “Suprematist
Cross” digital video loop sequence.
References
lucy Flint, “Vasily Kandinsky, White Cross (Weisses Kreuz),”
Guggenheim Collection, http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/
medium_work_md_Painting_71_73.html
Kazimir Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Supremation...
New Realism of Painting,” 1916.