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Albert Triviño Massó

The Loop Dissertation

VAP Third Year

Word Count: 8805

First Language: Catalan

UCA 2008/2009

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Content

Introduction (of Time)

Loop
Loop/Eisenstein

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour/NewMedia

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour/NewMedia/Conlusion

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour/NewMedia/Conlusion/Bibliography

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Introduction (of Time)

In this essay we are going to see that there is a difference between a loop and The Loop.
A big difference between the essence of a loop just as a presentational device and a loop
created as a loop. Even more, we are going to see a difference of nature between the
medium of Video and the medium of the Loop by presenting the most important aspects
of its nature, by talking about its situation inside the New Media world and by comparing
it with the history of Colour in the Arts. We are going to see all these by explaining
important concepts related to the theory of the Loop and confronting them with the
language of cinema and video.

Having a look at human art and philosophy history it is possible to see that the Loop has
been always linked to humanity. That link is the search for immortality, one of the most
important and relevant questions in human philosophy. We can say that time and death
are two central concepts always present in human thoughts and fears. All these kind of
questions are in the beginning of philosophy, literature, music and art, different ways of
expression to give a meaning to our existence. All these disciplines work like mirrors,
reflective surfaces where we can exteriorize our thoughts in order to analyze them,
compare to them and learn from them. It is a psychoanalytic process to relieve our
worries, a process to make atonement for the things we can’t understand. In this sense,
poetically speaking, we use Art as a crucifixion of our “sins”. This is the use we gave it,
and the reason why it is so present in everyone’s life in one way or another. The creation
of images is a way of making points of reference for us to compare to them. A way of
objectivising internal worries in order to make the process of analyzing them easier.
Create immortality, universal concepts and ideas through images. This is their real power.

For a better understanding of all this it is quite useful to analyze the origin of the word
“image”. This word comes from the Latin imago: the funerary masks used by the roman
patricians for their burials. The function was to preserve the facial attributes of the dead
so the soul could live forever. Another good examples are the portraits at Al-Fayum
tombs (burials from I to III AD centuries at the roman period of Egypt) or the statue of a
roman emperor. We can see that the etymological original of the word “image” is

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strongly linked to the concept of immortality, because it is not about fighting Time but
the creation of it. Analyzing Art is useful and revelatory in this sense. Time is not past or
future but present. What is in the present, now, is what exist and what existed. Being in
Space is being in Time. That’s why images have been so important for humans (and
specially the use they had for people in power). Images fix a concept by creating time.
Time is longevity and continuity. Time is static and immortality is not the fight against it
but the creation of it. Time is not a race from point A to point B, it’s not the race from
past to present. Time is just present. It’s is the same as Space.

History is made with the objects, knowledge, facts… that still exist. It is an artificial and
partial history made with the remains of the truth, with what still exists in space. That’s
why being in space is being in Time, because space is present, and present its existence.
A layered present created with the accumulation of different events. If an event doesn’t
leave remains, a testimony of his existence, if an event can’t stick to Time and prolongs
his existence, is like it never happened. Memory is unfair and partial. That’s the true face
of human expression; it’s most basic origin. That is to leave a testimony of existence so
we can live forever. Having in consideration this facts, portraits and self-portraits gain
plenty of sense and importance. It’s the most direct result of all these human worries
about Time and existence. Another key concept that plays an important role in this
process is perception. Perception creates existence so being perceived is to exist.

If that is the power a single image encapsulates, we have to imagine that video has more
potential: 25 frames per second, 25 images per second. The digital nature of that medium
gives you more freedom of action to manipulate the image. The possibilities to create
time and play with are a lot more. You can even work with only one frame by expanding
it through Time. These factors put video closer to painting and sculpture than
photography or cinema. That’s because these two last languages work by the
condensation and the stoppage of time, while painting and sculpture by expanding it. The
Loop takes the process started with painting and sculpture to its natural evolution.
Cinema works by fragmenting Time and creating a cinematic time by putting the
different sequences all together. Its nature is montage, based on editing and on the
making of a collage of different moments that the camera has recorded. It creates a

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distinction between past, present and future. That is a fake time. And the nature of
photography is to stop it, to create marks and point of references of certain moments.

But video consists (or should consist) in length. Montage is used to create division in
order to build a cinematic time by contrasting past, future and present. That’s why the
Loop doesn’t need montage, because it’s against its nature, which is the creation of
longevity, the creation of immortality, the creation of Time.

The Loop

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There are two time-related syntactic categories that apply specially to the Loop and the
way it works. According to Peter Wollen1 tense and aspect are two categories that play a
very important role in time-based medias.

Tense, which as a noun refers to a verb form expressing time, is the different distinctions
there is between past, present and future in language. In media languages it is the same. It
is a useful tool to make a distinction between cinema and video works, and the Loop.
Cinema and video are languages that play with different tenses by confronting or
comparing them, for example. There is a dialogue between the different time moments,
and this dialogue is what creates the cinematic time. In the Loop, instead, there is only
present tense. The Loop doesn’t even consist in different present tense lengths because
there are no divisions (not even frame divisions should exist). There is only one present
continuous tense.

Aspect is defined as a grammatical category of verbs making reference to the action and
its qualities. It defines the status of the events and its place in the cinematic time. If we
talk about cinema, for example, the aspects of an event would be beginning, continuing,
persisting and ending, while the aspect of the Loop is only continuing and persisting. In
cinema there are two indispensable narrative elements: the beginning and the end. It is
possible to play with them and its location inside the film (Christopher Nolan’s Memento
is a good example), but in the end, the audience has a clear image of what was the A and
what was B, what was the linearity of the story. We can’t see that on the Loop because it
doesn’t consist in narrativity. This concept of film theory makes reference to the
processes the author, the filmmaker, uses to present the story told to the audience. It
makes reference to how the narrative is presented, how it is articulated. In cinema it
would be through montage, music, images, all the elements that form the film grammar.

If we talk in those terms, there isn’t narrativity in the Loop because there isn’t narrative
either. There is no story to be told. The subject matter is the looping process itself. The
objective is very different so the elements to be used should be totally different as well.

1
Wollen, Peter (2000) in Time in Video and Film Art in Making Time. Considering Time
as a Material in Contemporary Video & Film. Florida: PBICA ed. Lake Worth.

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The Loop language is against cinema’s, which is based on harmony that consists on the
planning of the editing chain through drama, melody and narrativity. For John Cage
sound and harmony were opposite to silence, understood as time length. This concept of
silence is going to be especially relevant for the Loop theory as one of its most important
language elements. The Loop will consist in the creation of time length, with silence or
self-generated sound.

Loop is a continuing and persisting present of a looping process.

Loop/Eisenstein

Once we have seen that the Loop it is not created through montage it is useful to compare
it to Eisenstein theories, especially important in all the matters we are discussing here.

Do we consider the Loop as a variation of the different categories of montage or as an

opposition to them? We are seeing that the Loop is a language by itself, with its own
rules. It is a different language for a different purpose. Its nature is completely dissimilar.
Basically it consists on time length while cinema language on editing and montage. Loop
looses control over the direction of the piece, but cinematic language consists by building
a final piece by having total control over the different elements and how they are
arranged.

As said, montage is maybe the most important element in cinema theory and practice. It
is its essence. Eisenstein understood that and created the basics of the theory of montage.
For him “real cinematography begins only with the collision of various cinematic
modifications of movement and vibration” and “within a scheme of mutual relations,
echoing and conflicting with one another, the move to a more and more strongly defined
type of montage, each one organically growing from the other”2.

2
Eisenstein, Sergei. (1977) Methods of Montage in Film Form, San Diego: Harcourt
Brace, Javanovich Publ.

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An important word that appears in these sentences is “relation”: the continuous process of
relationships within a film is what creates the tension and the rhythm necessaries to build
the cinematic time. The objective was to affect the audience by creating the tertium quid,
the third thing, as Eisenstein defined it, through the process of juxtaposing different
scenes or different images within a scene. Create a final idea, a final concept, by relating
other ones. Affect the viewer in a certain way and create different effects on it, for
example, social and political answers. This process demands total control and
understanding of the images and sequences one is dealing with, as well as, a clear image
of the idea wanted and the rules of the language. It is really a thought process where
nothing escapes the planning of the filmmaker. He is pretty much a mathematician
because the images work as numbers in equations. A + B to achieve C, and it need to be
C and not D. Nothing escapes the mind of the creator in order to make the spectator feel
and think in a specific way. Edit to create a collage of different times and spaces to create
a third one, a specific cinematic time and a cinematic space previously thought by the
filmmaker.

In the process of montage music is another key element with the objective of
emphasizing the rhythm, the tone and all the elements of the equation in order to define
more accurately the tertium quid. Basically its role is to direct the “orchestra” that the
film is.

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson

In the methodology of Eisenstein’s montage time and energy (energy as Robert Smithson
talked about it) are condensed in some kind of arranging, are condensed as tertium quid.
Montage will represent the order whereas the Loop the unpredictable chaos.

The Loop doesn’t condense time and space like cinema and photography do. It works in
an opposite way: it expands them. The main concept of Eisenstein montage is the scheme
of relations that creates and the dramatic tension that comes from these relationships,
while the main concept in the Loop is repetition, a Deleuzian repetition, as we are going

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to see later. But first, we are going to focus on the relationship between the language of
Loop and Smithson’s theories.

Robert Smithson’s theories are extremely relevant in relationship with the grammar of the
Loop and the way it works: “I don’t think things go in cycles. I think things just change
from one situation to the next one, there’s really no return”3.

By reading this sentence it is easy to see the relationship (and the connection) between
Robert Smithson’s theories and the way the Loop works as a visual independent
expressive language. For Smithson the entropic process is when we force a subject to
change by applying some kind of energy to it. In this process there is no return because
we even change the molecular structure of that subject, its most basic components, and in
order to go back to his original state we would need such an enormous quantity of energy
that it would be almost, if not, impossible to achieve (and this would lead to further
entropy). The entropic process is an irreversible process; once it has begun there is no
way back to the original state. There is a typical example to define this process and this is
the melting ice cube. If we apply some energy to the ice that is going to melt and if we
wanted the original ice cube we would need to restore the original molecular structure,
making the job impossible.

This idea says a lot about Time too: Time and Space are the same thing, where only
present exists as a mix of past and future, a mix between what it was and what could be.
Only things that are in the present Space exist in Time, so the running process of
permanent creation through adaptation to the environment and to the changes on it.
Entropy refers to this process of permanent creation through expansion. Because there is
no way back in this entropic process that is Time we have this feeling of nostalgia when
we think about it. And we are going to see that Loop is Entropy itself too.

Now we are going to focus on different important aspects in Smithson’s entropy theory
that are related with the Loop: information, accident and waste.

3
Smithson, Robert. (1973) Entropy made visible. Interview with Alison Sky in Robert
Smithson: the collected writings. London: University of California Press.

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“The more information you have the higher degree of entropy, so that one piece of
information tends to cancel out the other”4. It’s a process where all the predictions tend to
be wrong and useless because like Smithson said “planning and chance almost seem to be
the same thing” and it’s based on adaptation to the environment more than in evolution.
It’s like if by putting something into space you would loose any control upon it. A good
example is a church converted into gallery, or the ruins of Rome for example, where we
can see different elements of different ages. It’s like opening the Pandora’s Box. Once
you have started the entropic process there is no way back and all the results are going to
be totally unpredictable. All this is extremely related with repetition because this is the
agent that’s going to cause all the unpredictable, new and infinite relationships, effects,
results, forms…

All of these “collateral damages” are inside the concept of accident, created without any
control upon them and out of planning. Chance is as important as repetition itself in this
entropic process that the Loop is because the new created meaning is going to create
another meaning by adding itself to the previous new meaning. And this is going to
happen until infinity. By putting an element in a Loop and repeating it over and over
again we are kidnapping it from the original context where it was originally conceived.
We are breaking the original chain by creating another one, another new chain. But the
difference between Eisenstein’s montage chain and the Loop chain is that in this last one,
we are only having control of the first part of it. All the other parts of the chain are going
to come by themselves, creating a product that in the end is going to be only an echo of
what was originally.

So the more information we have and it’s added to the Loop, to the entropic process, the
more accident we are going to have and create in the final product. If Eisenstein’s
equation was A + B = C, the Loop equation is A + X = Y, X and Y being unpredictable
agents. And then Y is going to be in another new equation that is going to create new and
unpredictable agents of other future equations. If Eisenstein’s montage is under control,

4
Smithson, Robert. (1973) Entropy made visible. Interview with Alison Sky in Robert
Smithson: the collected writings. London: University of California Press.

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the Loop montage isn’t and that’s why there are all these accidents, and accidents can be
new creations but also waste: another important Smithson entropic concept and important
for the Loop theory too.

This other entropic concept that we can find in the Loop is the concept of waste. This
refers to the process of loss needed to achieve changes and a better or different state.
Waste is going to be created inevitably when we apply some kind of force to a subject
pushing it to change. We will loose something but we will have something new instead.
And in time and space this process is happening every single moment, so the process of
waste and creation is permanent and they go together as part of the same equation. All
kind of waste: material, conceptual, energetic… is going to be irremediably unstoppable
and out of all control of the artist.

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition

To expand this theory of the Loop, by comparing it with other theories like Eisenstein’s
or Smithson’s, we are going to talk about the theory of “Repetition” that Gilles Deleuze
develops in Difference and Repetition5. Some of the concepts that he relates to Repetition
apply directly to the Loop.

For Deleuze Repetition is the action of rising to the nth degree the first state of an
element, object or process. It is the action where singularity is universalized, where all its
potentialities are developed. Repetition is the opposite of generality. Generality
understood as a concept that expresses a process where the elements are exchangeable for
similar ones without risk of altering the final result. Generality is the law, a particular
concept that can be applied into multiple cases, similar between them. Repetition it is
against this. Repetition is singularity, universality and eternity, against generality,
variation, particularity and permanence: unpredictability against predictability.

5
Deleuze, Gilles. (2006) Diferencia y Repetición, Madrid: Amorrortu Editores.

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Because Repetition is not the act of duplicate or replicate always the same thing, but the
unpredictable process of development of the first state. It is the entropic expansion and
multiplication process of an origin. Deleuze says that Repetition in Nature is impossible
because there everything is constantly changing and mutating. But Nature is Repetition
by itself. It is an entropic process of repetition where the origin, the original state, is too
far away to get an experience out of it. Duplication and exact reproduction are impossible
in Nature but not Repetition, as we have just described. Repetition as Entropy is what
Nature and Reality are, where every element is part of a big chain of events with the same
start, origin and beginning. If the beginning had been different so would have been the
Nature and Reality, as we know them. That shows us that repetition creates its own laws
and generalities. Singularity creates them. Repetition is the instauration of the power of
singularity. They are part and result of pushing the original element to the nth degree.
Repetition is the transgression and violation of the Law as method.

These concepts of Nature can be related with Plato’s Allegory of the Cavern. For Plato
the world was divided in two parts: the World of Ideas and the Material World. This last
one is where we would be living. Considered the real world, but for Plato it is nothing
more than an illusion. This world would be a cavern, where we would be chained facing a
wall where shadows of animals, objects... would be projected from a fire behind us.
These shadows would be created from puppets placed along a raised walkway between
the fire and us. For Plato what we consider Reality is nothing else than the shadows of
another reality.

Outside the cavern would be the word of Ideas where the origin of the generalities and
laws of the cavern are, the cast of the puppets of the cavern. So our “reality” would only
be shadows of copies from the original objects, from the truth: copies of a copy of a copy
of a copy of a copy… and so on. The farer we are from the beginning the more copies are
created. This is nothing less than an entropic conception of Reality. The more copies exist
the more copies are created. This is an unstoppable process to eternity.

This allegory is a metaphor of a lot of concepts, but applying to the Loop theory, we
could say is an allegory of Time and Reality, and it applies directly to Repetition and its
relationship with the Loop. The Loop is the intent of evocation of this natural process.

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More than that, it is the appropriation of the essence of the Nature and Reality as
expressive tool. The way the world works as subject matter. In the process of the Loop a
start is forced to go towards its own nth degree creating different “copies” of itself, each
of them more and more distant and different from the “cast”. But we can say that those
copies aren’t just copies, aren’t different elements from the original one but the original
one itself evolved. More than evolved we would say adapted. They are this adaptation of
the original element to the surroundings that are the same time are adapting themselves.
Then we can say that if we consider that copies exist is because we can remember the
original state. Memory is what pushes us to think that there is a past and that all the forms
that we can see are just copies from the beginning from an original state that doesn’t exist
anymore but we can remember it. This process of remembering is what pushes us to think
that there is a past. But if we consider that only Present exists, then those “copies” aren’t
just copies in a bad sense like Plato considered them. They are the origin itself but as its
nth degree form. They are the origin evolved onto its own eternity form. If we consider
this, then the Loop is an Art form, an expressive tool, always changing, always surviving,
always alive, always adapting itself to the surroundings. The Loop is Repetition: the
order inside the disorder, or the disorder inside the order. And this process is what creates
Time and the sense of movement inside an apparent stillness.

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour

We have seen that the Loop is an entropic self-reflective language that can play a double
face, educational and conceptual, role and that works as a metaphor of Art and human
expression, because it continues the process started by painting and sculpture.

Art can be extremely powerful to help us understand our perception and the way it works
in relationship with the stimulus. It is the most powerful and interesting face of visuals in
our world. Playing with the rules, strengths and weaknesses of our perception we can
create new worlds, new contexts, new spaces of understanding. So first of all, there is this
educational aspect, which is to learn how our perception works, to know the rules (that
would be different depending on if we are talking about music, literature, painting,

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film…), the structure things are made of. Once we know this we can play with it in order
to create new kinds of perceptions, artificial perceptions and with them, once again, new
loop entropic processes that would lead to new structures that once they are understood
they will create new perception… and this process is going to repeat over and over again.
Picasso started the entropic process that was the twentieth century art by creating new
contexts of meanings to consider for the visual image and that, at the same time, did
create other contexts. It is similar to how a tree grows. That’s the aim every art form
should try to reach because it is the way to take things further. The repetition of this
process moves art forms and Art itself because to really appreciate it, it is necessary to
know the rules, to recognise the elements. These concepts are pretty abstract but there is
an example that is going to be useful in relationship with this matter.

Two years ago I presented an installation called 4 Colours as part of the Film and Process
unit. We were supposed to be aware of the film as a material medium in opposition to the
digital video and play with that by scratching black leader, bleach it or paint on it, similar
to Stan Brakhage painted films. Hand-made work. I wanted to avoid all that and focus on
the conceptual self-reflective potentialities of the process. The inspiration and the
influence of this piece was a Nintendo DS game called Brain Training. In this game
based on mini-games to develop some of the mental abilities, there is one that consists in
a series of colours words such as “yellow” or “green” where the letters are in a different
colour than the one is mentioned. “Blue” in yellow, “green” in red or “red” in black, for
example. The player is supposed to say the name of the colour of the letters. For example,
say yellow when the word “blue” appears. A chronometer counts the time spent finishing
the test.

I considered this test really interesting and a good starting point for a research of how our
brain and perception work in terms of reading and watching. I started thinking of what is
first in human perception, words or image, a visual image or spoken/written word, or
even more, and see what is first the mental concept or the visual part of it. In the game
your mind tends to say the word and not the colour in the beginning, but you force
yourself to read first the colour. If you keep on doing this and forget the game itself, your
mind is going to start reading the colour first than the word, so if you try to read the word

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now and not the colour is going to be difficult, like in the beginning but in the opposite
way. One doesn’t know if the language is first or the concept: first we tend to read the
letters maybe because we are used to it, used to read instead of analyse the colour. So this
game is much more a test to show if there is something innate in human perception or if
all is a matter of learning habits than anything else.

This was really interesting in terms of language and human perception. I used computer
printed strips of four different colours sticking them onto bleached black leader 16 mm
film, and inside each one of them it was the word of a colour printed in a different colour
font: “yellow” in red (blue strip), “red” in black (yellow strip), “black” in blue (red strip)
and “blue” in yellow (black strip). From this I created an installation of four loops
running through four 16 mm projectors placed one next to each other creating a row. The
four projected images created a big square made of four little squares making the
relationship between the colours. The word weren’t matching the exact middle of the
frame so they were running from the bottom to the top of the image. The whole did create
a confusing self-reflective atmosphere were your eyes were running from one square to
another making colours and words relationships. Reading the word “black”, for example,
your eyes unconsciously looked for the colour black, both in the colour letter fonts or in
the background of the images, and then if focused on the black background image, for
example, your eyes were looking for the colour yellow (which you just saw in the colour
of the fonts). And this process was happening over and over again, never ending. The
experience of the piece was a loop itself.

“We learn to think about everything and then we train our eyes to look as we think about
the things we look at”6. This words express quite well what 4 Colours represent and tried
to explore. A piece that takes advantage of the way our mind works in relationship with
the external information and its processing to play with it, forcing the viewer to fight his
own mind configuration and the experience and perceive in a different way. Through the
repetition of the four loops create an atmosphere of confusion and hypnosis where the

6
Nicholas, Hamlyn. (1976) Entry of the catalogue of The Festival of Expanded Cinema
at the ICA, London: ICA.

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more you watch the more difficult is to leave the room and to say what is first: the
concept or the language.

The sculptural presence of the installation helps to achieve this effect as well as the self-
reflective condition of the piece. Once the four loops have been settled the piece is totally
autonomous and self-governing, and the entropic process exist on it: information (once
you play it you loose control over it), accident (unpredictable things happening, new
meanings and relationships over and over again) and waste (the film strips being
scratched while they are running through the projector and, of course, the waste
electricity of the four projectors switched on. Even this is going to create further
information, accidents and waste).

Thinking about all this led me to consider Colour as a potential context where I could
experiment further with all these theories about the Loop. Play with colour in order to
create new stimulus in a more conceptual way, without any figurative elements on it that
could cause distraction on the audience. The way Colour works in the human eye and
emotions makes it really interesting in relationship with art forms. It has as always been
used in Art but it wasn’t until the last century that it stood as an independent expressive
form (works from Yves Klein or Ellsworth Kelly are a good example). In this essay we
are trying to establish the Loop as an expressive tool by itself, that’s why I thought these
two elements could work really successfully together. I saw a strong link between them.
Loop and Colour.

It is important to know two basic things concerning Colour and the human eye/brain.
There are as many colour perceptions as people exist and that the visual memory is more
limited than, for example, auditory memory. This helps us understand that Colour is one
of the more relative mediums in Art, not only because it relates with the characteristics of
each person’s eye but also because it relates with “the past” of that person, with all his
past perceptions. Our visual memory is a layered experience influenced and affected by a
lot of agents and conditions. By that I mean to a short temporal visual memory, as well
as, to a long temporal visual memory, which refers more to all the perceptions a person
has seen, all the things he has seen in his life. This last one affects the viewer in a
conceptual way and will condition the position from which he will unconsciously

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approach the perception of the work of art. The first one will affect the viewer more
physically: the light conditions of the room where the piece is placed, the light outside (if
there is windows), and even his health condition in that particular moment.

I did a piece to test that helps me experience these factors: Green Kitchen. I covered the
white fluorescent tube of my kitchen with green cellophane to change the light from
white to green. The result was revealing and quite disturbing; the light created was quite
immersive and environmental creating a totally different perception of a space that I
experience every day. All the objects in that room were now different. The mix between
my previous memory of that space and the new colour green did create a new perception.
But that wasn’t the only thing that changed. The entire perception of the house changed
as a result of the retinal after-images. All the lights around the house turned (now) red
(obviously my perception led me to see them red). The effect didn’t stop there because
the street and the sky were covered in reddish light. By doing a small change in my
kitchen my whole visual experience of the house and the world changed completely. A
chain of cause-effects. An entropic process.

Another good example is Olafur Eliasson’s installation Your Colour Memory7: this piece
consisted in an oval room where once inside the entrance was hidden. The walls were
completely white without any visual reference where your eyes could focus the vision.
Instead, the room was filled with colour light coming from neon lights. Different colours
were changing gradually and softly from one to another. The colour was the only visual
reference in the space, the only information your eye could get. The result of the process
of being constantly exposed to colour lights was a layered visual memory. The whole
process was based on the retinal after-image that the different colours were leaving on
your retina. And similarly to my Green Kitchen, the experience of the exterior world
changed too.

I thought that this idea could be improved by adding interaction to the process, by adding
the action of the viewer. The movement of the audience going around the room would be

7
Arcadia University Art Gallery. (September 1, 2004 – January 9, 2005), Glenside,
Pennsylvania: Arcadia University Art Gallery.

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the factor that would change the lights so the effect of the retinal after-image would be
more obvious and noticeable.

As said, these two projects are based on the process called after-image that occurs in the
retina and the deception it causes. This part of the human eye is the responsible for the
reading of the information that goes through the lens and the iris. The amount of light
that enters our eye is projected to the back of the retina where the images is read by the
light sensitive cells called cones and rods. Cones are responsible for the daytime vision
and for the colour and details while rods are responsible for nigh time vision. Some
theories say that these nerves only read the colour red, green and blue information. We
can see all the colours because they are a mix between those three primary ones.
Exposing the retina to just one of these colours will cause fatigue of that specific colour
receptor and will lead the eye just to recognise the other two and all their possible
combinations (according to the hue of each one). Here is where the deception takes place
and where the interesting part for art and experimentation begins.

Let’s take the effect caused in Green Kitchen for example, where exposing the vision to
green light for a long time drove us to see all the other lights reddish. That happened
because the process of staring at green colour led the eye to a fatigue and tiredness of our
retina towards green causing the recognition only of the bluish and reddish colours once
we changed the light to white (red, blue and green together). More than leading to the
recognition only of certain colours the eye corrects and balances this difference between
them. Another example would be if instead of green light we were exposed to red light so
our retina could only read green and blue letting us only see cyan colour. So what
happens in this process is that we see the opposite colour to the one we have been
exposed to: green – magenta, blue – yellow, red – cyan…

These are theoretical examples and clear colours would only happen if the intensity of all
them where the same. For example, green – blue – red with the same intensity would be
white light. That’s why in Green Kitchen the red is not a perfect red but a reddish tone
and it is different inside than outside the house. Light has the colour spectrum inside: the
primary and then all the combinations between them. But we all know that there are
different types of lights that cause different colours depending on different variables.

19
Light is composed by waves with different wavelengths, frequencies, vibrations or rates.
A wave with long wavelength and short frequency will be refracted less than a wave with
short wavelength and long frequency. These variables will create different colour
temperatures and colour intensities causing different possible combinations that will lead
to the different colours that we all know.

Another important concept/illusion related with light, colour, the Loop and the projects
we are discussing here is the optical mixture. When we see two colours simultaneously
they are combined and then perceived as one new colour. This process is also called The
Bezold Effect. This might be clearer and easier to experience it in colour paper or in
paintings. That was the famous process used by the Impressionists to create their famous
colours and light. In fact, they were the ones that started experimenting with this theory
and physic effect but the Postimpressionists (like Seurat) were the ones that really pushed
it to the limits and with it the Colour possibilities as an independent image and expression
tool. Paul Signac talks about that:

“Is a musician, because he knows that the 3/2 proportions is harmonic, or a

painter, because he is aware that orange together with green and violet forms a ternary
combination, any less of an artist, less able to feel and to impart emotion? […] The Neo-
Impressionists are not slaves to science. They apply it as their inspiration directs: they
make their knowledge serve their intention.”8

One of the most famous art groups working with this concepts were the Pointillists but
Cézanne maybe was the most revolutionary because he started the destruction of the
slavery of colour from the content so now the central point in paintings where the
experimentation of Art itself (forms, Colour, perspective…). Art about Art. Reality was
left behind. Reality was now an excuse, a support for the experimentation. For example,
apples in Cézanne paintings weren’t a representation of real apples any more, but they
were apples. Paintings and Art weren’t a mirror any more. Here was when the
independence of Colour started. This independence took place more specifically with the
Cubism and Picasso’s 1912 works when it was left behind from the materiality process of

8
SIGNAC P. extract from “L’education de l’oeil” (1899).

20
Art. We are placing these examples to understand the role of Colour in the twentieth
century.

“Among the traditional non-iconic elements constituting a painting (drawing,

texture, facture, surface, among others), colour is – semiotically speaking – a singularly
mysterious double agent. It acts simultaneously as a substance and as a sign, a
paradoxical condition that no other element can claim.”9

This definition is quite useful because the Loop works in the same way having this
double face in its substance, in his nature. We can establish a parallelism between the
process of liberation of Colour and the process of liberation of the Loop. Both were
slaves of the medium where they were born. Slaves of long tradition and an established
list of meanings linked to their substance. They were used according to these inherent
connotations to add other levels to a work. They were working just as iconological sign
but they were lacking substance that is the quality of being important, valid or significant,
and the fact of having their own essence, subject matter and essential nature. The process
of liberation gave substance to Colour and is giving it to the Loop by breaking the chains
that constrains it to the iconography is supporting and the reality is looping (Loop was
just a representational device). Then is when the concept of Loop that we are discussing
here starts taking form. The looping process is no longer about something out of his
nature but to reflect about itself and the elements that are inside its process, the elements
is looping. The process is leading the Loop to the same point where Malevich took
Painting.

Looping the Loop. The new parameters should be unrelated with any other kind of
medium and shouldn’t make any kind of reference to other iconographies. When the
Loop was a mere tool the process of repeating material over and over again was
constrained by the references attached to it. The effect create by repeating previous

9
H.D. Buchloh, B. (2009) The Diagram and the Colour Chip: Gerard Richter’s 4900
Colours in The Serpentine Gallery. (2008) Gerard Richter. 4900 Colours. London: The
Serpentine Gallery.

21
existing visual images, sound, music… was conditional on the context these resources
were taken from and the audience mixes the knowledge they have of those images to
form the judgement of the piece. Generally, the intentionality of the artists that use loops
in that particular way is to reflect about the original piece and his place and importance in
the history of images. And the images for the Loop should be self-generated by the
repetition process. Or images especially created for it, images without any beginning or
end (both physically and conceptually speaking).

The actual action of repetition is here the subject matter of the process of repetition. The
attention needs to be focused on the entropic process that is repetition as a time generator
and as a life generator. That’s why montage is against the concept of Loop and can’t be
part of his new gained essence and independence.

“The pictures of the last fifteen to twenty years insist on a radically new orientation in
which the painted surface is no longer the analogue of a visual experience of nature, but
of operational processes”.10

We could talk about the Loop in the same word as the quote above. Once it has been
liberated from its previous job the Loop is now a context where operational processes
take place, more or less under control (because chance plays a vital role as said before).
The Loop is a landmark where experimentation towards the visual images and its
boundaries takes place. But also towards the audience, his conception of Art, his position
en front of it and the way of consuming it and thinking about it. The nature of the Loop is
different than the nature of still image and normal video image. It’s not a delimited
manifestation of a concept. It’s a playground where concepts are created and elaborated.

Back to Colour, there one of its elements that applies to the Loop and its use of Colour:
the Diagram. If we observe Colour on the twentieth century and the artists that have been
working with it, we can see that is has been always linked to the concept of diagram, as if
they had the urgent necessity to put some order to the new nature of Colour. Artists such

10
Steinberg, Leo. (1972) Reflections on the State of Criticism in Branden W. Joseph.
(ed.) (2002) Robert Rauschenberg, Cambridge and London: MIT Press.

22
as Malevich, Mondrian, Gerard Richter, Ellsworth Kelly or Barnett Newman are a good
example of that new reality of Colour and a good example of what we could name as the
New Colour Order. The terminology we are using here for diagram it references his most
ancient meaning coming from the Greek (diagraphein) and Latin (diagramma): “marked
out by lines”.

This use of the laws of geometry to articulate a new language has a lot of entropic
potential. The elements to build the pictures with were just the chromatic notes they
wanted to use and with laws of composition they created panels of colours. These
different compositions were just the beginning of a bigger process. All these pictures
were divided in different art movement, but all of them have a big component of
abstraction on them. This abstraction gave a lot of freedom to the audience to understand
those pictures and due to the powerful expressionism inherent to colour the entropic
process begun. Of course, this entropy was at the same time quite abstract, less obvious,
because of the stillness of the still image, an abstract looping process that occurred only
inside the mind of each individual, a mix between the colour potentialities, their
arrangement on the picture and the unconscious interpretation of the audience of those
images.

There is a lot of potential of all these concepts for video loop and the use of Colour on it.
Use the diagram to put order in the new nature of Loop and in the potential new
relationship between Loop and Colour. A good example is Derek Jarman’s Blue,
although it is not a loop and it is quite documentary, with a quite clear meaning. But the
great expressionistic use of colour blue gives certain freedom to the viewer (specially
when it is seen on a big installation like in the exhibition “Derek Jarman curated by Isaac
Julien”)11. Colour gives to the Loop that educational element we were talking about and
enforces its self-reflective nature.
Experimental filmmaking has always paid attention to colour in different ways. But the
most interesting usage of it has been the one related to self-reflective and self-referential
pieces, such as Flicker Films. Films that played with the way the moving image is

11
The Serpentine Gallery. (23 February – 13 April 2008) Derek Jarman Curated by
Isaac Julien, London: The Serpentine Gallery.

23
created, human perception and colours. Digital Video has more possibilities to explore
these concepts and link them to the Loop. The time-based media component of video
combined with the knowledge of Colour and the human perception of light, gives the
moving image a lot of ways to explore, especially with the possibilities that new
technologies offer in relation with the playing of the loops.
Analogue loops play with analogue entropy, more linked to the materiality of the film.
We could even say that they play with structural entropy (such as Lis Rhodes and Ian
Kerr C/CU/CUT OFF/FF/F), while digital loops are more conceptual, more related with
the audience perception and role towards Art.

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour/NewMedia

New Medias are especially relevant to the theory of the Loop because of its ability to
create new languages. New needs create new technologies, new technologies create new
medias and new medias create new languages and ways of expression by adapting
already existing expressive forms to new contexts. This process is called appropriation
and a clear example is Duchamp’s ready-mades. For example, we can see this process
with mobile phones technology: the needs for a bigger communication system led to that
technology and, when incorporating cameras, to a new media with a new language such
as Youtube videos. These new products are recognisable because they use previous
existing tools, but its essence is different because so is the context where they have been
born and the use they have. Then, its nature is different too.

Bigger and more established languages appropriate these new expression tools. When
that happens is when the main audience sees on them its own rules and function and
recognise them as powerful independent communication devices. In that moment is
when they can step out as independent languages.

In this space is where the Loop, and not the loop, is born, a place where it finds the
necessary elements to develop its potentialities as a language by itself.

24
Lev Manovich talks about this concept on his book The Language of New Media. On the
chapter The New Temporality: The Loop as a Narrative Engine he scans cultural history
to find three paths that a strategy or technique can experience as language. The most
important and relevant one relating with the Loop and with its journey is:

“An interesting strategy or technique is abandoned or forced

“underground” without fully developing its potential”12.

The language of the Loop is linked to the origins of cinema, especially to the nineteenth-
century pro-cinematic devices such as the Zootrope, where inside a wheel different
images of a sequence would be placed, and when cranking the handle the cinematic
experience would be created. These experiences were usually about a concept more than
a narrative sequence: a man walking, a man cycling a bird flying or a horse jumping.
Little loops that where in the beginning of the creation of cinema and the moving image.

But cinema pushed the Loop out of the essence of “the seventh art” by choosing
narrativity media. Cinema avoids repetition so its audience does. The main reason of that
was that analogue loops where uncomfortable to show and unproductive. We don’t have
to forget that cinema was created tight from the beginning as an industry to create money.
The Loop was not an option. In that moment two factors were against the development of
the Loop. First, there wasn’t a media that offered possibilities to the Loop to developed
itself. And second, the main audience was already prepared for a moving image based on
narrativity and not on repetition. The Loop was then slaved as presentational device.

But with the new medias are being created these last years the potentialities of the Loop
can finally be developed. New Medias are creating a variety of tools that the Loop could
use to expand itself and to arrive to its nth degree.

Here we arrive to a point mentioned before: the difference between analogue and digital
Loop. New Medias offer a lot of future especially for the Digital Loop to explore new
fields, contexts and languages for the moving image away from narrativity and based on
repetition. That is because New Medias and Technologies such as Internet offer infinite

12
Manovich, Lev. (2001) The Language of New Media, p.315. Cambridge: MIT-Press.

25
playing possibilities for the Loop. Definitely Internet based technologies are the future of
the Loop.

Analogue Loop is based more on the exploration of the materiality of the medium and on
the exploration of conception of Time attached to it, linking it with an entire history of
structural and experimental filmmakers. But the digital Loop creates a “new temporal
aesthetic” as Manovich describes13 where new issues can be explored and where the
objective is the creation of a totally new language and a totally new moving image
experience. Manovich tries to link again the Loop and narrativity, but that shouldn’t be
the future for Loop because basically would become a presentational device again. The
focus should be in its own process of repetition as basis to explore the creation of totally
new images and visual experiences.

In this field of New Media the Loop should find good conditions to develop its own
sound potentialities. A sound based on silence and self-generated sound through the
energy created from the process of repetition. The sound of the creation the images.

From Analogue and Digital Loop we will arrive to the New Media Loop.

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour/NewMedia/Conclusion

In this paper we built a theory around the Loop to define it as a totally independent and
new language inside Art based on repetition and the energy that this process creates. The
Loop is not cinema and it isn’t video either. It is the Loop, a visual experience closer to
painting or sculpture. It is the visual experience of painting and sculpture alive. The same
experience pushed to its nth degree. A language that is in the beginning of its existence
but it is already developing its potentialities thanks to the possibilities that the New
Medias, such as Internet, do offer.

It is a necessary language for human visual experience. It the same process as the exit
from Plato’s cavern. The audience of visual and moving images are used to narrativity.
Cinema is the law, while the Loop and repetition represents the transgression needed to

13
Manovich, Lev. (2001) The Language of New Media, pp. 314 - 322. Cambridge: MIT-
Press.

26
fight it. The audience is too comfortable on his consuming position towards the moving
image. They are chained facing a wall where shadows are projected, thinking that those
shadows are the only reality possible. But if they could break the chains and go up
towards the exit they will find out that their “reality” was nothing more than shadows
from puppets. But if they would climb more they will arrive at the entrance of the cave,
and the sun will blind them. They would want to go inside again, and some of them
would do it, but some of them wouldn’t, and those who would stay out of the cave and
wait until their eyes would be used to the sunlight would discover a totally new world.
They would discover another reality. Once that would happen they wouldn’t want to go
back inside the cavern again.

The audience is not used to repetition, but it is needed to force them out of its mental
comfort. The Loop it is against all the elements the audience is used to it. The language
needed to expand the Art walls and the limits of the moving image. The language to
expand the essence of the moving image.

The Loop is the order inside the disorder, or the disorder inside the order. It is the new
reality.

Loop/Eisenstein/Smithson/Repetition/Colour/NewMedia/Conlusion/Bibliography

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Gidal, Peter. (1976) Structural Film Anthology, London: BFI Publishing.
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Manovich, Lev. (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT-Press.
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Festival of Expanded Cinema at the ICA. (1976) London: ICA.
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Grynsztejn, Madeleine. (ed.) (2007) in Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson. San Francisco:
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