Federico Diaz’s site-specific sculpture Geometric Death Frequency—141 is now on view at MASS MoCA through March 2012. Earlier this fall, the artist answered a few questions from Whitewall about the sculpture made from 420,000 black spheres that’s currently filling the museum’s courtyard entrance.
WHITEWALL: You are known for your site-specific projects, and certainly have, as you put it, "transformed [MASS MOCA] into a new form of algorithmic architecture." What about MASS MoCA appealed to you in the first place? Did you have any idea of what you wanted to install there before Geometric Death Frequency—141 was created?
FEDERICO DIAZ: MASS MoCA is a museum that presents art of a very high intellectual level. The Museum’s large installation of works by Sol LeWitt, maybe the largest in the whole world, serve as proof of this preference. His geometrical installations are fascinating and it is a fantastic feeling to be compared with him to some degree.
MASS MoCA was originally an industrial area, and I grew up in Europe in a similar surrounding so I have a fondness for MASS MoCA in that I appreciate how it must have taken a great deal of courage and energy by Tom Krens and Joe Thompson to create such a large space for art from the basis of a factory, and to create a space outside of New York that has no parallel in the US.
WW: I know a photograph of the site's clock tower resulted in the wave-like Geometric Death Frequency—141 by your manipulation of the data. Was the wave result intentional on your part? And in your mind, how do the two objects connect?
FD: My installation GDF—141 contains a code derived from the museum’s proportions. We begin to process our view of the world first through the eyes, similarly to the lens of a camera, and then the world around us is recorded in our brain in another form and that same information is later reconstructed back. Similarly, cameras work to convert a multi-dimensional space into a flat form. Where our senses are limited, we use technology. Light is formed by photons similarly to how a photograph is formed by image points that have various intensities of light.
If the world around us and light were of one color only we would not be able to see neither shapes nor matter. It is color that informs the brain of matter, thus the color spectrum of photography is the key to a spacial object.
It is as if you throw sand into the air and you freeze individual grains in motion. Points are still and they create matter. Light works similarly. Can we stop light? It is not possible, is it? The sculpture is a frozen wave, the current shape is only a segment therefore it has sharp edges. Otherwise the points in the form of small spheres would fill up the whole museum.
WW: Your work often contains an interactive element. Why do you feel that is important? Do you think there is an interactive element in this work at MASS MoCA?
FD: A seed of a tree will not grow if you do not water it. That’s an interaction. I create art that is meant not only for the studio, but to respond to a specific space as with the courtyard of MASS MoCA.
We also considered bringing a robot that would interactively build a part of a sculpture so that viewers could experience the process through which the majority of the work was created in Prague. There was a great deal of interaction involved in the sculpture’s creation and we hope to present this element of the work at MASS MoCA.
WW: You combine so many different elements into your artwork, from viewer interaction to sound to architecture to technology to art to using computers to create sculptures, from examining biogenetics to mankind and the universe. What inspires you?
FD: When observing tribal nations and more traditional societies, I am always fascinated with their relationship to what cannot be described. Without using mathematics, physics, nor words…they hold a relationship, as we say, with the energy force of natural elements such as the wind or a mountain. For them, a mountain is alive, the sun is alive, which is something Europeans find hard to understand. For us, the sun is a source of radiation and heat, while for them it is a living organism. The relationship is established with the help of rituals containing movements with a specific meaning. It is the perception of these relationships in contemporary society, which I find most intriguing. Surprisingly, similar relationships can be found in the sport of Formula 1 racing.
When a Formula 1 car approaches the cockpit, there are 30 people cooperating at the same moment within the space of six seconds. Each one of them has a ritualized movement, similar to a shaman’s movements. Each person has a specific role, an intended deliverance of energy. In these six seconds, they produce something that gives new energy to the driver. He then becomes a medium perceived by huge audiences.
And now I’m getting to the point. Imagine the enormous energy looking at the driver. Imagine a huge explosion of an impalpable wave spreading through the space within a single second.
In my work, I explore ways in which this type of energy, or energy in cases such as Formula 1 racing, can be materialized, taking on physical form.
All photos: Federico Diaz’s Geometric Death Frequency—141 (2010) at MASS MoCA, courtesy Federico Diaz Studio.
