: Remarks
on ABC
A metaphor for linearity is the term ABC, that we are used to taking for an alpha-betical order. As a linear listing of persons (and sometimes things) it is common, polite and political correct, because there is no ranking. The term ABC in our language means
a) the alphabet children are taught, and
b) a basic knowledge about something that must be learnt first, if one wants to get closer and to work with it, for instance the classes of the non-linear web-movies.
My work has two aspects of a non-linear web-movie:
a) interactivity - when the user clicks on the centre of the letters, the letter almost fills the whole screen; I thought about learning, about repeating and trans-parency of a letter, and about the phenomenon that there is a flow of letters one takes an element from and does something with it; when we start learning how to write, we begin with big letters;
b) the way, how the order of the letters changes by chance and without the inter-action of the viewer.
When you go to the cinema, you see a film once; in exhibitions and on the web films are running in loops; for me this constant repeating doesn't make sense. A random factor gives something accidental to a work, like the surface of an oil pain-ting for instance, it gives a human aspect as well. Strangely enough the term ABC has three letters, whereas the word alphabet has only two (A - the alpha and B - the beta of the Greek alphabet). Alpha is used in bitmaps and movies for an invi-sible channel for creating masks. Beta stands for the test versions of a software allowed to be used by anyone as a feedback for the software developer, who wants to get a general idea of the problems having occurred. Gamma - the third letter of the Greek alphabet - is the name of colour management in images and for monitors. Correcting the gamma means changing the position and - saying it more easily - the amount of the white. In this work the letters are digital photos of neon signs on a metal holder. I guess I saw them without their original context left on a building that had been a food store once. As the neon shine is not visible on a photo I had to change the gamma a bit in my work to make that light spread out on the letters and the metal.
About László László Révész' online work ABC
by Heidrun Quinque-Wessels, 2004
Révész collects photos of things and situations that attract his attention. Not following a certain concept, this can be photos he shoots himself, or a collection of postcards, personal photos of a friend or even photos found in journals. A typical language of images, that could possibly lead way to interpretation, he thus avoids. Even images that are used with a piece of art at a later time are not really selected, they are rather picked out by mere chance. The collection of such material is not be seen in context with an artistic approach. It only receives meaning when he computerizes, compiles and works on it for one specific piece of art. Sometimes Révész combines it with elements generated by computers. Throughout the last years he used a digital camera, which enables him to take short video sequences. To my opinion Révész chose the letters ABC not only for the reasons he mentioned in his own text above, but also because of their triviality and their lack of a deeper meaning. The symbols mean nothing but what they stand for. By doing so he forces the viewer to concentrate on the symbols and on their movement on the monitor; he avoids associative ideas, that would lead the viewer away from what might be Révész' interests: to address and link common and antagonistic issues of linear and non-linear codes and make them a subject of discussion.
Because the letters mean nothing but what they stand for, they can be used universally. Révész has listed a general use of ABC as a concept and its single symbols, applicable for all groups of population and areas of life, and one speci-fically applicable for the software/web area. In these areas ABC and its elements appear as signatures with which we (all or only certain groups) deal with on a daily basis. Something we always meet, leaves our attention, as we tend to notice only deviations of the normal. The letters in the end-product do not appear as pre-requisite of many kinds or - if so - only as a triviality. They are part of the foun-ding stones of our world. Aged for millennia, yet highly progressive, and then like today of highest importance.
For Révész such apparent discrepancies are interesting phenomena, like any anta-gonism in general. In many of his works we can find them as an important issue, especially when he displays pairs. He relieves the letters from not being noticed by letting them change into an other and different colored symbol of the ABC, displaying them as neon signs with a different flash-frequency. With their dimens-ional order, their colorful light, their non- textuality, they remind of a picture, on the other hand in every one of the letter fields a short "letter movie" is presented. Thus, ABC could be described as a picture made of movies. A picture or a scene is synchronized and therefore it is non-linear. We view it as an entity and - by mov-ing our eyes between the single parts of the picture - we try to gain an overview of the interrelation of the single parts, thus decoding the picture. By creating a sequence of letters or words of a text or even a sequence of pictures of a film it merges from a non-linear into a linear - chronological - act. However, the single frames of a film are pictures and non-linear, their chronological succession is linear.
The content of a film is another genre, where linearity and synchronism and therefore non-linearity meet. Normally levels of different paces exist in a film; these need to be decoded: Moving parts with their related pace successively, stills are being decoded like a picture. With the use of a computer it has become possible to intervene with the linear movement of a film and - by doing so - influence its course. This can be done by so called interactivity but also by a chance factor. Both possibilities Révész has built into his work. On the one hand the user can view the single "letter movie" in full screen size, in which he follows our way of reading and writing from top left to bottom right. That means that if you start clicking the first film top left, you can only see that part of letters that fits into the size of the letter frame - the remaining part is hidden behind the following letters. Only when the last letter frame bottom right has been clicked the letter is fully visible in the foreground.
This alludes to the non-linearity of a picture for only in something synchronized - a scene - one can steer to different parts, e.g. by use of a mouse, on the other hand it displays the linearity of a script code. But we uncover the letters step by step in a linear way. ABC, however, does not carry a text, for the letters only display themselves, as the succession A - B - C is no longer observed, every attempt to interpret the term ABC is stopped abruptly. What I have described as "letter movie" are frames in a succession, however, they are presented at different paces (something that is only possible in a computer-generated work). Sometimes we can see a letter for a longer time span, sometimes it vanishes quickly to make place for another one. There is no real movement in the film: with the frame only the letter changes, there is no continuous meaning, no action, no story; the succession of letters is ad libitum.It seems to me that the chance factor that operates the little films enhances this effect.
Révész mentions capital letters a school beginner has to deal with. Teaching the ABC to little girls and boys shows how important and basic for life the alphabet is. Children see the elements of the ABC as images first, then they learn to use them linearly. By doing so they get used to the text mode modern societies are based on, they are on the threshold to become a member of them. In the scientific-made world of modern societies observation and experience are analysed rationally and acquired by their conception, that means abstractly. Letters belong to the level of abstract thinking. They are the basis for transferring an image into text. In many cases we are not able to understand images without text. We are permanently transferring non-linear scenes to terms and sequences of words. This is the way that fits to the structure of our world. But doing so we notice very quickly how difficult it is to express in linear words what we see as a non-linear image and that we are not able to create a scenic co-existence by means of a textual one-after-the-other.
Révész' work ABC seems to have the question at its core, what art might be, and which way to show the result of the artist's observations so that his piece of work can be called art. It is a question of form and not a question of content; it's a question of the role of antagonisms, of image and movement, time, chance… Basic questions of art.
Heidrun Quinque-Wessels' text was translated by Frank Siebold