martin bonadeo | texts | moebius display

When I was a child I used to turn on a light and stare at it for a while to later turn it off and remain in total darkness. For a minute, by retinoues persistence, I saw the form of the light bulb, which slowly glowed until going out completely.
Black…
Fear…
To conquer it, I had to wait a few minutes so that my eyes would adapt, and a small source of light passed through the cracks in the shutter started to illuminate the entire hall until I could see again.
Some time later I read in a book of experiments that if you took a strip of paper and glued its ends together forming an arc with torsion, you could give shape to a representation of infinity. I have a fond memory of retracing the tip of my finger over and over along this edge. The following step was to write “infinite” sentences or opposite words on each side of the paper in order to unite them on the same side.
Two years ago at UCLA, studying the binary logic that directs computer languages, these ideas appeared again in my head and the first sketches of the Moebius Display were born: a set of LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights that can be turned on are found in a tri-dimensional weave that describes the Moebius band. If indeed the idea resulted to be very attractive, to construct it in reality required solutions much more complex than taking a strip of paper and uniting the edges. I needed the constant help of collaborators in fields as diversed –and polarized- as mathematics and philosophy, art and engineering.
One of the points that gave me the impulse to complete this was the idea of finding an alternative to the majority of the new media arts works that end up resolved on outputs standard like a printed sheet, a monitor or a data projector and speakers. As long as the rectangular window is the main form when thinking in images (painting – the orthogonal is implicit in the word –, photographic and video cameras), the introduction of a space of expression with another topology puts in tension many questions regarding the traditional forms of visual representation. In the simple act of presenting more than one point of view – different from the traditional perspective, the Moebius Display confronts the spectator with the impossibility of contemplating all the images that are exhibited at the same time. From this site one can see how they travel through the same plane the inside and the outside, the good and the bad, the light and the darkness.

challenging media
by rodrigo alonso

Some contemporary artists have not forgotten Paik's lesson. They know that to design really original technological experiences they need to challenge the hardware. That was Martin Bonadeo's proposal which won for him the New Technologies Grand Award in the 2005 edition of the Premio MAMbA- Fundación Telefónica de Arte y Nuevas Tecnologias.
Bonadeo's project is born out of the need to avoid the traditional interfaces of the digital universe: the screen, the mouse, the keyboard. To create a new medium to find a point of encounter between the piece and the spectator that is not previously formatted by a series of devices which have become so common as to turn itself invisible and incapable of provoking wander or reflection, to avoid, on the other hand, the image framed by TV or PC monitors, and the spatialized image of video projections. To build, instead, a non-existing device, a technological piece that imposes its material presence besides giving way to its flow of texts and images.
Bonadeo's work has the shape of a Moebius strap. An endless text runs through it, alternating between its faces, neglecting the cuts, the jumps, the separations. Even though this device no longer causes anyone's amazement -the artist himself admits the idea comes from a childhood experience"-, it does not, anyhow, cease to work as an instrument of reflection and criticism. And a criticism, particularly, of the systems of image representation we are used to, based almost unfailingly on the Cartesian planimetry. In his original project, Martin Bonadeo puts it this way: "I'm interested in creating a non-bidimensional Euclidian space. The rectangular frame and window are the prevailing forms when it comes to think about images. Casements to paint pictures -the orthogonal is implicit in the word-, photographic and filming cameras do nothing but reassure the frame.., the introduction of a space for expression with another topology will bring up to surface many issues about the traditional ways of visual representation".

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