Metameta, 2017
元元

a scripted webpage, w/ archived images from viewer participation


Metameta, 2017 from Zeppra on Vimeo.

Metameta is a Javascript driven web-application which dynamically, endlessly generates new windows inside the existing ones with the scrolling of a user, who can stop at any point to screenshot and therefore create abstract graphics. I hope to use this recursion structure to signal the primary component of the digitally displayed world: rectangle, and the diagram of computational logics: loop.

Looping inside rectangles, windows nested each other mediate a condition of contemporary information-obtaining experience: links are followed by other links, and by clicking links time are unfolded; the missing piece is always at the other end of the next window. The sense of searching for novelty is created by this repetitive action.

Also, the visual similarity and color palette of this application relate it with the historical context provided by Modernists, namely Piet Mondrian, and their efforts to capture the essential elements of the visible world using geometry and primary colors. However, Those rendering of the “eternal rules,” incarnated as paintings, in the contemporary eye, are merely applications of some codes – and what is that “code” beneath their practice? What is the “meta-meta”, beyond the realm of language?

Metameta 是由Javascript编写的递归结构网页应用,随着用户滑动滚动条的动作,它无限地在现有窗口内部生成新的窗口。这个结构结合了矩形视窗,即数字显示环境中的基础视觉元素,与循环(loop),数字逻辑的基本图式。

在矩形中不断循环着、嵌套着、运动着的视窗模拟出当代数字设备用户信息获取体验的实况:链接后仍有链接,点击链接即展开一段压缩的时间,而我们所欲求的永远在下一个视窗里,在重复的动作和循环的代码中获得关于“新”的旧体验。

同时,我希望能够以视觉上的相似性唤起现代主义实践中对于世界“元规则”探索的历史语境,尤其是以其鲜明视觉语言在流行文化中作为视觉符号取得一席之地的蒙德里安的作品:一个由矩形划分、原色表征的世界。这些图像虽是世界的抽象,但本身却仍有元码——这元码是否存在?在语言的疆域之外,“元-元”何为?


On show view: at Power Station of Art, Shanghai 上海当代艺术博物馆