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Parallels Between Suprematism and the Abstract, Vector-Based Motion Graphics of Flash

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Parallels between Suprematism and the Abstract, Vector-Based Motion Graphics of Flash By Yuli Ziv Abstract level by focusing on pure geometric forms. The use of This article explores parallels between aesthetic con- basic geometric shapes, such as a square, circle, rec- cepts surfacing in both the suprematist art movement tangle, in combination with basic colors, such as red, in the beginning of the 20th century and the abstract, black and white, became the most well known charac- vector-based motion graphics [1] associated with the teristic associated with the Suprematist movement and Macromedia Flash software / authoring environment. its founder, Kazimir Malevich. According to his follower In order to lay a foundation for the discussion, the his- El Lissitzky, "a new era had originated in 1913, at the torical context of Suprematism and Flash, as well as moment when Malevich created the black square, the the influence of revolutionary events on art and artists 'zero point of painting, the absolute contrast to the old are outlined. The theory and vision behind the two concept of art and painting.'" [4] "forms of expression" establish the basis for an explo- ration of the art objects they produced, which will be This new form of painting can also be approached in explored and compared with a focus on three main terms of the role that technology played within the cul- aspects: form, color, and motion. (The latter, a given in tural and historical context of the time period. As Billy motion graphics, exists as a concept in suprematist Klüver pointed out in 1966, the art world, inspired by works.) The subject of analysis is not the influence of the industrial revolution, "embraced technology as sub- Suprematism on Flash as a tool in general but on the - ject matter: the enthusiasm of the Futurists, the experi- - to a certain degree standardized -- abstract forms ments of Dada, the optimism of the Bauhaus move- that the software produces. ment and the Constructivists, all have looked at tech- nology and science and found materials for the artists. But for all this interest, art remains a passive viewer of technology. […] The new interface is one in which the Introduction artist makes active use of the inventiveness and skills Suprematism, the Russian art movement of the early of an engineer to achieve his purpose." [5] 20th century, can be understood as a continuation of the philosophy of Constructivism, a movement that concentrated on objects' structures and their de(con)struction: "The constructivists rejected the tra- It has to be pointed out here that ditional notion of the work of art as a product of indi- this essay focuses on Flash as vidual genius and a marketable commodity." [2] The new form of creative activity they suggested was one one of the most common tools for that would be utilitarian, ideological, and would pursue the creation of abstract, vector- formal objectives. based motion graphics. However, Tschichold defined the then new form of modern paint- the subject is not the tool itself, ing as "the domination of form and intellect." He pro- but the analysis of the, to a cer- posed that "In the art of today, one will not see a pos- sible distorted version of nature, but a genuine new tain degree, standardized, forms creation, not dependant on nature, but in addition to it, it produces. being another kind of nature with its own laws." Describing this new form of visuals, Tschichold states, "it makes use of exact geometric forms that hardly ever appear in nature, so the colors of the new paint- Flash software was developed in the late 90s, at a ing are not derived from nature either, as they largely time when the World Wide Web was continuously were in earlier painting." [3] growing and new forms of digital media were emerg- ing. With their product Flash, Macromedia successfully The object in Constructivist art appears as simplified fulfilled a need for tools to easily create media content. and abstract and is not recognized as a "thing," but as Computer-generated graphics could exhibit expres- a form. Suprematism took these ideas to a further sions of movement without requiring "hand-made" ani- Intelligent Agent 6.1.1 flash.ziv.01 mation and with only a few lines of code ready-made Similar to the way in which modern art movements by Macromedia. One effect produced by Macromedia's such as Constructivism and Suprematism were reac- new release was the blurring of boundaries between tions to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century artists and programmers, which significantly increased and the later Soviet Revolution of 1917, Digital Art -- the number of "digital artists." The creation of net art admittedly a hybrid practice that cannot be considered and "interactive multimedia" suddenly became more a movement per se -- has been a response to the late feasible for a massive number of "producers," and the 20th century electronic revolution. In 1986, Langdon results of their endeavors virally spread through the Winner was trying to find the right definition for this Web. Before long, there were Flash Art competitions; revolution: "Often it is called simply 'the computer rev- art organizations, software companies, and individuals olution.' […] Other popular variants include the 'infor- created their portals and online galleries by means of mation revolution,' and 'network revolution.' But what- Flash. The (online) art world had to face the question ever its label, the message is usually the same. The whether a new generation of Digital Art was born. In use of computers and advanced communications tech- one of his articles, Lev Manovich described the phe- nologies is producing a sweeping set of transforma- nomenon as the "Flash Generation": "This generation tions in every corner of social life." Computer scientists does not care if their work is called art or design. This emphasize the influence of the Information Revolution, generation is no longer is interested in 'media critique,' "in which the computer is going to affect us very pro- which preoccupied media artists of the last two foundly, probably more so than the Industrial decades; instead it is engaged in software critique. Revolution." [8] This generation writes its own software code to create their own cultural systems, instead of using samples of The new forms of technology that affected such wide commercial media." [6] spectrums of our lives obviously would not leave the art world unchanged. Roy Ascott points out that "his- It has to be pointed out here that this essay focuses torically it has been a characteristic of the artist to on Flash as one of the most common tools for the cre- reach out to the tools and materials which the technol- ation of abstract, vector-based motion graphics. ogy of his time produces, just as his perception and However, the subject is not the tool itself, but the patterns of thought have tended to identify with scien- analysis of the, to a certain degree standardized, tific and philosophical attitudes of the period." In the forms it produces. The same graphics could be creat- post-industrial revolution era, art was inspired by ed in programming languages such as Java and C, but "machines," which were used as a tool and an object; Flash was one of the first software tools that made the in the new digital era, "the computer is the supreme production of graphics and animation more accessible tool that its technology has produced." [9] to a general audience. While Constructivists represented industrial, technolog- It is interesting to note the parallels between the art ical forms as art and used industrial materials (metal, objects produced by Suprematism and the Flash glass) to create art objects, digital artists make use of Generation -- they are similar in visual terms but could computers and electronic devices to create and repre- not be more different in their respective contexts and sent art objects. Digital art is not only created by the ways in which they are created. In the following, I means of different kinds of machines -- such as com- would like to concentrate on different characteristics of puters and digital video and sound devices -- but is these parallels, such as form, color and motion (which also presented on these machines. exists only as concept in Suprematist works) and their context. As if predicting the future of digital art, Malevich wrote in a letter to Dutch artists in 1921, "art has once again Historical, Theoretical, met the figurative world of motors and machines, the world of technology, which it must destroy as it did the Cultural Context: figurative world of academic arts, and only then will Revolutions as Art-Driving Events come the true form of the new world." [10] As technol- The influence of technological and historical events on ogy changed the art world in the beginning of the 20th art has been a much-discussed topic in art history. century, digital technologies are changing contempo- Artists have always been among the first to react to rary artistic practice, which uses and deconstructs cultural changes and to be inspired by them. The them in order to create "new forms." Soviet revolution in Russia, for example, led -- accord- ing to Trotsky -- "to the victory of the proletariat, the Artists were always profoundly influenced by revolu- victory of the proletariat is leading to the transforma- tions but, as the history of the 20th century shows, tion of the economy. The transformation of the econo- revolutions involving "machines" seem to have had a my is in process of changing the cultural state of the particularly strong effect. Norbert Wiener states that working masses. And the cultural world of the working "the first industrial revolution represented the replace- people will create a new basis for a new art." [7] ment of the energy of man and of animals by the ener- gy of the machine." By contrast, "the new industrial Intelligent Agent 6.1.1 flash.ziv.02 revolution which is taking place now consists primarily screen for paint in nonobject art." [14] Rozanova's in replacing human judgment and discrimination at low statement could also be applied to the non-objectness levels by the discrimination of the machine." Wiener of digital art.
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