18”x18”, wood, ceramic
Pixel is inspired by the seminal article on video art by David Antin, The Distinctive Qualities of Video. To follow from Antin’s premise, I have been very interested in creating a conceptual framework for development of my Digital Minimalist and Technological Minimalist styles. Although these styles inform themselves from their historical roots in Minimalism, Digital Minimalism, for example, seeks to determine the intrinsic qualities of digital art, and does not look to emulate other previous art forms.
In this case, the piece is reduced to the fundamental building block of all digital imaging – the pixel. Encased in each vitrine is a single pixel of the most basic tonal values; one black, one white. Accompanying these minimal forms are the numbers for the red, green, and blue screen values for the respective pixels. However to draw a contrast between the intuitive anthropomorphic/physical numerical values ascribed to these tones in context with the digital, the numerical values have been switched. In other words, the usual numerical value for a white pixel, 255,255,255 or #FFFFFF, signifying the presence of all colors of light, is defined as 0,0,0 or the absence of all color, and vice versa with the black pixel to contrast the anthropomorphic valuation of these tones to that of the digital.
