|||> SPECTRAL UNIT-->digital paintings |||> inside Jackson Pollock |||> transmission four

SPECTRAL UNIT, as a multimedia project, aims to produce not only sounds but also images and writings. We believe in art as a generative and ritualistic process, where every action reveals what was previously invisible. The project we are building explores the universe of signs and images of seven abstract expressionists, and in this case, it focuses on the figure of Jackson Pollock. The piece we have composed and the accompanying video (which you can listen to and watch here) are titled 'Fractal Expressionism' in a process that atomizes the mark of the great American artist, contaminates it, and investigates it according to our sensibility. In Pollock’s paintings “randomness becomes a generative principle that continuously inspires the ensuing performance. Accepting this model of dialectics - of continuously assessing the uncertain outcome of your own intentions - creates a new paradigm for artists to work with. 

This dialectics of responding to a system that is beyond the artist's full control introduces not only a new language of painterly forms and shapes in art, but also creates a new way of thinking about making art, and what is essential to art.” (Adi Newton essay about Jackson Pollock). By following this method ourselves, we identified a series of frames in the video that, beyond our intentions, gave shape to what we believe are significant images.

A video is experienced in its flow, a river of images and sounds that enters our minds and immerses us. Extracting images from the video doesn’t simply mean creating static images through a technical process, but rather it involves transitioning from a flow of shapes and colors to their contemplation, amplifying time and capturing what might have been just the ghost of a moment. “Pollock became passionate about the study of archetypes, those unconscious models present in the human psyche.

Archetypes do not develop individually but are sediments of a collective unconscious, present in people without distinction of time, as primary and inherited forms that leave their traces in myths, fairy tales, and dreams—a sort of memory of humanity which, for Jung, are the keys to accessing the unconscious.” (Enrico Marani essay about Jackson Pollock). Transforming these frames into static images has been, indeed, a ritual for contemplating our archetypes as we approach the art of Jackson Pollock, effectively bringing to life a fractal expressionism.

Adi Newton
Enrico Marani September 15th/ 2024

Click here to open a slideshow with 22 digital paintings inspired by Jackson Pollock. Press “send key” and watch all the selections

Click here to watch the video of “Fractal Expressionism” and read Adi Newton’s essay about Jackson Pollock.

Click here here to read Enrico Marani’s essay about Jackson Pollock.