Two figures interface in a hypnotic digital loop. There is something erotic about their movements. Their rolling, hungry heads exceed corporeal limits suggesting a lover’s kiss—a computer-rendered vision of an image depicted in art for eons. And yet more than a kiss, the bodies hyperconnect in a permeation of the skin boundary that allows one to see inside the other.
But are they really only lovers? Could they not also be twins or even clones? In many ways, we take the infinite replicability of the digital medium for granted. Copies, clones, replicas, and rip-offs multiply promiscuously in code.
Casado’s “inside.v07” is testament to this, its virtual mirror line revealing that one head is identical to the other, yet each is also an original animation. The “inside” series was first displayed in 2002 at Picasso Foundation in Málaga, Spain, and Postmasters’ NYC Gallery in 2004. By revisiting Casado’s work in 2021, this piece asks how this dialectic of originality, the interplay of the new and the old, has changed in the intervening years.
The new NFT format is posited here as a tool for reanimation, considering afresh the questions of the past through the lens of contemporary technology, which in turn is interrogated by the art that preceded it.
Text by James Morales
NOTE:
1- The original QuickTime format of this file does not open in current QT version anymore, it does on older versions. The digital file to provide to the collector has been rendered in 2021 for conservation purposes.
2- This artwork was originally created as an edition of 5. Edition 1/5 is owned by Contemporary Art Museum Gas Union Fenosa, A Coruña, Spain. Edition 2/5 is owned by a private art collector. This NFT is edition 3/5 and the only NFT edition.
3- For conservation purposes (ONLY), artist will provide to collector the 480 individual images/frames that make this animation. With these images, the animation can be recreated using any current software.
