#Opalking

[uniqueopal]

[tanmay-banerjee]

‘La Reprise — Roman Opalka’ from “Detail-001, 1–32062” to “Detail-256, 5594934–5607249.” Each of the Details are run in a looped animation, perpetually oscillating between black and white.

“La Reprise, Roman Opalka” belongs to a series of digital creations, titled as: “La Reprise” or ‘Remake’ with the idea of digitally recreating or reproducing the visual form that reveals a certain aspect of regenerating the process used by few famous artists on their iconic artwork.


“La Reprise - Roman Opalka, 1-5607249 & from black - white” is a digital recreation or reproduction of Roman Opalka’s lifetime work called, 1-∞ 1965. A series of 256 images called ‘Details’ presenting an increment of generated numbers ranging from 1 to 5697249. Each Detail here has a format of 196cm (h) x 135cm (w) - exactly as Opalk’s original work - using a white font in size 10, however each ‘Detail’ has a unique background colour, starting from Detail-001 in dark black (R=0, G=0, B=0; #000000) and culminating on a pure white background colour, as seen in Detail-255 (R=255, G=255, B=255; #ffffff). 


As observed through the series of images, the passage from a very contrasting and legible image (revealing white numbers embedded in a deep black background), towards a fading and illegible white on white situation, reveals an act of disappearance. This progressive degradation of the background colour shows a finite range of 256 possible grey tone values that can be obtained in an 8-bit RGB image, whilst also evoking Opalka’s attempt to achieve a ‘numerical infinity’ and a visual transcendence achieved by fading to white. 


Here, the primary difference from Opalka’s work, is that the sequence of numbers is generated through a computational process replacing the organic manual process used by Opalka, attempting literally to count till infinity and spending nearly a lifetime doing so. 
Since it is computationally possible to generate extremely lengthy numbers in an extremely short duration of time (within seconds) - as opposed to Opalka’s manual process that took him over 45 years), the idea is to eliminate the notion of “time” hence also eliminating the numerous variations that reveal themselves as a byproduct of “time” that are very much relevant and fundamental to Opalka’s organic process. In stark contrast to that of that, this series of images reveal a perfectly linear degradation of the background colour that is visually represented in a ‘digitally dry’ environment and quantified through computation and reduced to a finite framework of what was an infinitely complex process that manifested through a lifetime of work, in Opalka’s 1-∞.

[instaroidz]

Det lutar lite. Men vi var en helt egen plats med ström m 50 från Algot. https://www.instagram.com/p/B_osT-opaLk/?igshid=zewm86gembu7

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