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3 mayo, 2025 In A.I., Algorithms, Archive, Art, I.A., paintings, Photography

HOS Image: Waiting as an algorithmic form: The image as a promise

 

/German)

/Spanish)

 

 

Marcello Mercado

HOS Image: Waiting as an algorithmic form: The image as a promise

 

 

 

 

On the threshold between generation and waiting, this installation presents an image that has not yet occurred. A system message, repeated and trapped in its own state of waiting, transforms into a generative landscape. Here the «non-event» becomes the scene: inaction as a form of agency, error as a form of aesthetics. The algorithm does not generate the image, but its ghost: an invisible performativity, a readymade suspended in latency.

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This phenomenon can be understood as a manifestation of «differential algorithmic latency,» a mechanism structured by the system to manage computational load through access hierarchies. Waiting is not an error or an exception: it is a function of the system, a strategy of commercial optimization and differentiation of experience.

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In this context, the image generated by artificial intelligence is no longer simply a visual result, but a computational instance conditioned by access logics, prioritization strategies, and usage policies. Each image activates a consumption of computational resources and becomes an entity with computational costs, with implications for algorithmic architecture and commercial policy.

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This work invites reflection on how latency, waiting, and inaction can become aesthetic and critical elements in the age of generative artificial intelligence.

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1. HOS Image: Waiting as an algorithmic form: The image as a promise:

 

 

A HOS (Held On Server) image is an image generated by an artificial intelligence model that has not yet been fully processed or delivered to the requesting user. It remains suspended in a queue within shared servers, typically assigned to non-paying or free users. Technically, this situation reflects a mechanism of resource management and computational prioritization.

 

Conceptually, the HOS image embodies a latent visuality, a not-yet-deployed form inhabiting an invisible architecture, in transit between the request and its visual appearance. It can also be understood as a symptom of an unequal algorithmic economy in which access to the visible is mediated by hierarchies of payment, speed, and computational privilege. The image exists as a promise, as a wait, as a structured delay.

 

 

A. General Framework:

The ChatGPT phrase «Image processing. Many people are creating images right now, so this may take a while. We’ll notify you when your image is ready« can be analyzed as an interface unit that condenses a technical architecture, a business logic, and a time-of-use modulation. Waiting is not an error or an exception: it is a function of the system.

 

B. System elements involved:

1. Algorithmic Queuing: The system implements a scheduled wait time to manage limited computing resources. Premium users are prioritized, while non-paying users are moved to a «low-priority zone» managed by a scheduler.

2. Load balancing: The message indicates high load. Technically, it implies saturated compute nodes and the redistribution of tasks to others. But this redistribution is not neutral: it obeys access rights policies.

3. Conditioned Temporal Experience: Users‘ experience is modulated according to their place in a hierarchy. Latency is no longer merely technical: it becomes an operational stratification mechanism.

 

C. Categories of Analysis:

1. Functional Latency: The difference between request time and delivery time.

2. Strategic Latency: deliberately introduced as part of the freemium model.

3. Perceptual Latency: how waiting is communicated (in this case using informal and passive language) and how attention is managed.

 

D. Computational and structural implications:

Waiting becomes an indirect selection operator that filters user behavior (wait? pay? abandon?).

The message is part of an algorithmic containment system designed to regulate the anxiety of waiting with a friendly phrase, while keeping its discriminatory logic intact.

From a platform architecture perspective, this is a case of differentiated scaling, where access to compute–intensive resources is regulated by the business model.

 

E. Conceptual Proposal:

This phenomenon can be categorized under the concept of Differential Algorithmic Latency (DAL):

It is a queuing mechanism structured by the system to manage the computational load through access hierarchies. It responds not only to technical capabilities, but also to business optimization strategies and experience differentiation.

 

 

 

2. The Image as a Differential Product in Generative Systems:  

     Latency, Business Optimization and Access Hierarchy

 

 

A. INTRODUCTION

In the context of generative artificial intelligence, the image is no longer simply a visual result, but a computational instance processed in a distributed architecture conditioned by access logic, prioritization strategies, and usage policies. This essay begins with a technical and structural analysis of the message:

«Image processing. Many people are creating images right now, so this process may take a while. We will notify you when your image is ready.»

To break down its implications into two dimensions:

(1) the redefinition of «image» as a generative entity within an economy of latency and optimization,

And second, the algorithmic design of a conceptual simulation in Python that represents this differential waiting as a structural function.

 

 

B. What is an image in generative AI?

1.1. Image as computational output (output artifact).

In generative systems, such as DALL-E or Stable Diffusion, the image is not a pre-existing object, but an artifact resulting from a series of statistical computations, latent space sampling, and pixel generation from trained models. Technically, it can be defined as

Image (AI-G): a data structure consisting of a multi-channel array (RGB matrix) derived from a probabilistic inference on a trained model, conditioned by a textual prompt and generation parameters.

1.2. Image as differentiated consumption vector.

The same image, generated with different access levels (free or premium user), presents different latency, resolution or quality conditions. Therefore, the generated image is not universal; its shape depends on the business model.

Differential image: A computational product whose availability, resolution and generation speed are modulated by the privilege level assigned to the user.

1.3. Image as a node within an economic infrastructure.

Each generated image triggers the consumption of GPU, memory and computing time. On a freemium platform, this translates into a real monetary cost for the provider. The platform manages these costs based on

Rate limiting models.

Priority queuing.

User segmentation logic (free, professional, API).

The image is therefore not a final result, but an entity with a computational cost, with implications for algorithmic architecture and commercial policy.

 

 

C. Technical analysis of the «Processing image…» message.

The message contains four layers of structural information:

Layer                                                                                      Content                                                                                           Function

1. Status:                                                                      «Processing image» …                                                      Informs that the task was received and is in progress

2. Load:                                                          «There are many people creating images.»                             indicates system saturation and load distribution.

3. Warning:                                                                  «This may take a while».                                                Enter latency as an expectation

4. Delayed response:                                                   «We’ll let you know…»                                                    Shifts attention to the future and manages user anxiety.

 

This set of elements constitutes an algorithmic cognitive containment strategy designed to maintain user engagement without revealing the exact logic of the queuing system or access hierarchies.

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3. Building a Conceptual Algorithm in Python

 

The next phase is to design a Python algorithm that simulates this queuing structure. The algorithm does not generate images, it simulates:

– Task queuing based on priority.

– Differential latency.

The structured response of the system based on user conditions.

This algorithm will serve as a critical analysis model for image generation platforms based on freemium models.

 

 

3.a Conceptual Algorithm: Differential Latency Simulation in AI Image Generation

(Spanish version / English version below)

 

Explanation:

This algorithm simulates a differentiated queue structure based on user type (free or paid). It does not generate real images, but rather:

1. Generates queues of requests.

2. Assigns wait times based on user type.

3. Prints the message «Processing image…» followed by a notification when the image is ready.

 

 

Conceptual algorithm: Its goal is to represent a simulation of an imaging system with latencies, errors, priorities, and logs: similar to the message «Processing image. Many people are creating images right now, so this process may take a while. We will notify you when your image is ready:

 

 

 

 

 

 

3b. Curating HOS Images

 

In the contemporary universe of AI-generated images, a new figure is emerging: the HOS (Held On Server) image. It is not an image per se, but rather its suspended prefiguration. Its existence is marked by waiting: an initiated request, a promise of visuality not yet realized. This image, held on shared servers assigned to non-paying users, has not reached the threshold of the visible. It inhabits the technical limbo of the latent.

 

In this context, art is no longer limited to representing what appears, but begins to incorporate the structures of access, computation times, and systemic inequalities that shape what can and cannot become an image. The HOS image is both an object of study and a critical gesture. It forces us to ask: what is left out of visuality for infrastructural reasons? How does the algorithm work as an economic and aesthetic filter? What does it mean to curate what has not yet appeared?

 

Curating the HOS images involves attending to the ways in which latency becomes political. Instead of exhibiting finished images, one can think of exposing dead times, unfinished processes, moments when the eye waits but does not see. This displacement transforms the exhibition into a choreography of the suspended, an archaeology of non-rendering.

 

 

 

 

4. Waiting as an Algorithmic Form

 

Rather than understanding waiting solely as a technical delay, it can be thought of as a computational form prefigured by access conditions, algorithmic priorities, server architecture, and business models. In the non-paying version of ChatGPT, waiting becomes a kind of computational class threshold: if you don’t pay, you wait. This is related to ideas from

A. Critical Infrastructure Theory (Lisa Parks, Tung-Hui Hu): which examines the invisible layers of digital processing and how they mediate user experience.

B. Latency Theory: latency not only as a technical delay, but as a political construction of access time.

C. Media Theory (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun): processing times are not neutral, but political forms of relation.

 

 

5. Collective power of processing

 

The message «many people are creating images» introduces the idea of an invisible crowd, a phantom community, producing simultaneously. Here connections are made with

A. Structured simultaneity: a form of contactless shared temporal experience that could be compared to networks like Uber or Amazon Mechanical Turk.

B. Algorithmic queues: as spaces of invisible negotiation of desire, where each user is an instance waiting its turn in an opaque architecture.

 

What is an «image» in the context of generative AI?

In the context of generative AI, an «image« is no longer exclusively a visual representation produced by optical or manual means. Instead, it is transformed into a computational instance generated from statistically trained models that interpret latent vectors, textual prompts, and loss functions. The image no longer represents an objective reality or a symbolic subjectivity, but becomes an output surface optimized by algorithmic architectures, computational efficiency criteria, and training patterns.

An AI-generated image is not a stable object, but a deferred process, subject to logics of waiting, commercial priorities, staggered access, and asynchronous processing. The message «Processing image. Many people are creating images right now…» reveals that the image is also an experience of latency, competition for resources, and algorithmic regulation.

 

 

 

Classification of definitions:

 

01. Techniques

02. Epistemological

03. Ontological

04. Temporal

05. Phenomenological / Perceptual

06. Political / Economic

07. Mistakes / Failures / Mutations

08. Archival / Serial

09. Archaeological / Historical–Evolutionary

 

 

 

1-5. Techniques

01. Image as output vector: set of numerical values in a multidimensional latent space transformed into pixels.

02. Image as functional convergence: Result of a minimally satisfied objective function during training.

03. Image as loss residual: surface that minimizes the distance between the prediction and the data set.

04. Image as weight transfer: updated state of millions of parameters after backpropagation.

05. Image as digital transduction: interpretation of a textual prompt using convolution and attention layers.

 

6-10. Epistemological

06. Image as an act of automated inference: what the machine deduces from a description.

07. Image as the result of a probabilistic epistemology: it represents the most likely, not the true.

08. Image as a cognitive shift: it suggests knowledge without direct human origin.

09. Image as predictive artifact: a proposition of what should or could be.

10. Image as crystallization of learned biases: visual materialization of a database.

 

 

11-15. Ontological

11. Image as non-object: it does not exist without a network, a prompt, and a generating instance.

12. Image as computational event: an action that occurs and disappears if not stored.

13. Image as interpolation surface: between n latent points without a fixed center.

14. Image as model interface: visible only as a translation of internal processes.

15. Image as threshold: boundary between code and representation.

 

 

16-20. Temporal

16. Image as waiting: what appears after an algorithmically controlled delay.

17. Image as asynchronous process: it does not respond to human time, but to the flow of demand.

18. Image as perceptual latency: a state of delayed immediacy.

19. Image as an ephemeral state in the execution queue.

20. Image as a state of postponement: always potential, never immediate.

 

 

21-25. Phenomenological/Perceptual

21. Image as an experience of delayed gratification.

22. Image as a projection of human expectation onto an opaque network.

23. Image as algorithmic representation with the appearance of creation.

24. Image as perceptual deception: it appears human but is machine-like.

25. Image as a surface for the attribution of meaning.

 

 

26-30. Politics / Economy

26. Image as a unit of value generated under payment priorities.

27. Image as a product conditioned by levels of access.

28. Image as a computational privilege.

29. Image as the result of incentive architecture.

30. Image as an algorithmic filter that decides who sees what and when.

 

 

31–35. Mistakes / Failures / Mutations

31. Image as glitch: a revealing error in the system.

32. Image as unwanted mutation of a prompt.

33. Image as productive failure: it doesn’t fulfill expectations, but generates interpretations.

34. Image as the residue of incompatible codes.

35. Image as an asymmetry between human desire and network output.

 

36–40. Archive / Series

36. Image as one instance among millions: a node in an infinite series.

37. Image as copy without original: each generation is first and last.

38. Image as a visual record of an interaction.

39. Image as digital trace, not preserved.

40. Image as a speculative archive: its value lies in possibility, not stability.

 

41–45. Archaeological / Historical-Evolutionary

41. Image as a continuation of the automated pixel of video games.

42. Image as heir to the algorithmic art of the 1960s.

43. Image as a mutation of GANs and their evolution into Transformers.

44. Image as a consequence of the computational dream of the perfect image.

45. Image as the current stage of a long history of visual automatisms.

 

 

1. Technical Definitions

01. Image as a data vector: An image is a matrix of numerical values representing visual information that can be processed by a generative model.

02. Image as computational output: The result of an inference performed by a neural network based on textual or latent input.

03. Image as optimized file: An image is a structure compressed and transformed according to efficiency parameters (weight, format, resolution).

04. Image as rendering instance: Represents a frame generated by layers of graphical processes controlled by stochastic parameters.

05. Image as minimized loss function: The visual manifestation that emerges when a model manages to minimize the error function with respect to the given challenge.

 

 

2. Epistemological definitions

06. Image as a visual hypothesis: A probabilistic conjecture that the model proposes as a valid representation of the input text or context.

07. Image as statistical knowledge: Represents a point of convergence among thousands of examples seen during training, with no direct reference.

08. Image as synthesis of correlations: It is the result of the superposition of co-occurring patterns in previous data sets.

09. mage as operational interpretation: It is a reading that the system makes of a human instruction in terms of vectors and weights.

10. Image as the result of implicit reasoning: It does not illustrate a truth, but rather a probable calculation generated by hidden relationships in the model.

 

 

3. Ontological definitions

11. Image without a referent: The generated image does not represent an existing object, but rather a formal possibility.

12. Image as operational fiction: Its existence depends on the execution of an algorithmic process and not on an empirical world.

13. Image as technical object: It has its own existence as a processed, recorded and stored entity.

14. Image as synthetic appearance: It does not arise from a physical phenomenon, but from a network of numerical transformations.

15. Image as an unstable double: It is a projection that does not refer to a thing, but rather to a set of statistical conditions.

 

 

4. Temporal definitions

16. Image as latency: An entity that does not yet exist, but whose process has begun, awaiting computation.

17. Image as process duration: Its existence is measured by the time it takes to be computed and displayed.

18. Image as a product of waiting: It is linked to a social time shared by thousands of simultaneous users.

19. Image as deferred event: Its appearance depends on a priority queue managed by servers.

20. Image as operational suspension: It is characterized by a threshold between input and visual response.

 

5. Functional definitions

21. Image as Visual Response: It is the functional translation of a textual instruction or prompt.

22. Image as a unit of satisfaction: It is measured on the basis of its usefulness or congruence with the user’s desire.

23. Image as a validation interface: It allows for verification of the functioning of the model or the clarity of the prompt.

24. Image as a training test: It is used to evaluate the effectiveness or biases of the system.

25. Image as Reproducible Output: It can be regenerated, adapted or transformed under new conditions.

 

 

6. Aesthetic Definitions

26. Image as an emerging style: Acquires new visual characteristics by combining diverse training.

27. Image as automatic pastiche: Recombines formal features from thousands of styles and artists without awareness of authorship.

28. Image as Perceptual Coherence: Evaluates an image based on whether it appears «plausible» or «aesthetically complete.

29. Image as Statistical Visual Pattern: Its appearance is guided by regularities in the data set.

30. Image as object without aura: It has no original or context of human production.

 

7. Political definitions

31. Image as infrastructure product: Dependent on global computing resources and architectural decisions.

32. Image as algorithmic curatorial decision: What appears is filtered through the prioritization, censorship, and policy mechanisms of the model.

33. Image as conditional access: It is determined by the level of subscription and permitted use of the system.

34. Image as Digital Privilege Trace: Its resolution and speed of delivery vary according to socio-economic conditions.

35. Image as a result of opaque governance: The user neither controls nor knows the exact criteria for its generation.

 

8. Economic definitions

36. Image as a differentiating good: It is produced as part of a strategy of exclusivity or experience customization.

37. Image as a monetization node: It can be transformed into an NFT, a commercial product or viral content.

38. Image as a by-product of a SaaS model: It is part of the value proposition that justifies a subscription model.

39. Image as a return on data investment: It is generated from years of training on massive data sets.

40. Image as an aesthetic trademark of the vendor: It implies a style, speed, or aesthetic specific to the generating system.

 

 

9. Archaeological and Evolutionary Definitions

41. Image as the current version of a genealogy: It is the heir of previous visual practices (collage, rendering, CGI).

42. Image as historical accumulation: It is loaded with layers of data from different eras and styles.

43. Image as a technical threshold: It marks a turning point in the evolution of computational imagery.

44. Image as synthetic residue: It accumulates as part of the growing archive of generated output.

45. Image as future archaeological evidence: It could be studied as a cultural trace of generative AI in our time.

 

 

10. Critical / Meta-theoretical Definitions

 

46. Image as visible ideology: It involves technical choices that reflect values, exclusions, and biases.

47. Image as object of critical speculation: It can be used to question the boundaries between authorship, automation, and culture.

48. Image as a form of accelerated abstraction: It is produced without consciousness, body or affect, but with visual logic.

49. Image as a reification of connections: It makes visible regularities without deep semantic content.

50. Image as a distorting mirror of desire: it does not return what is desired, but rather what the system infers it wants.

 

 

The 50 definitions of the image in the context of generative AI show that we can no longer understand the image as a passive unit of perception or as a stable representation of reality. Instead, it emerges as a technical, operational, and speculative entity. Each generated image not only manifests a process of statistical inference, but is also marked by economies of waiting, hidden infrastructures, algorithmic decisions, and a genealogy of visual techniques. The act of «waiting for an image» is a critical experience in itself, as it makes us aware of time, privilege, technical architecture, and the transformation of the image into a conditioned flow. From this perspective, the image no longer represents, but distributes, prioritizes, and calculates. AI does not produce images of the world, but of the system that produces them.

 

 

 

 

Practical applications of the definitions:

 

Critical Curation of Generative Images

These definitions allow for the construction of curatorial criteria for exhibitions that work with AI-generated images, focusing not on the «content» of the image, but on its technical, political, temporal, or epistemological nature.

 

Interface Design

Developers can incorporate these categories to create interfaces that present waiting, latency, or errors as part of the aesthetic experience, rather than hiding them.

 

Dataset analysis

Use these categories to classify training images and understand how aesthetic or ideological categories are distributed across datasets.

 

Critical digital media pedagogy

Use the definitions as a basis for courses in art, design, philosophy of technology, or visual studies that seek to problematize the image beyond its form.

 

Institutional critique of generative models

These definitions can inform institutional policies on algorithmic transparency and visual ethics, suggesting criteria for evaluating generative models in terms of bias, accessibility, or economic structure.

 

Speculative AI Architectures

System architects or artists can use the definitions to simulate alternative AI models in which time, waiting, or error are intentional and significant elements of visual production.

 

 

For example:

5. Data Set Analysis: Reconsidering the Image as a Distribution of Latent Biases and Structures

Core Concept

By redefining the image as a technical-algorithmic entity within a generative AI system, the need arises to address not only the visible result, but also the latent conditions that make it possible. The training dataset ceases to be a simple collection of images and becomes an empowered visual structure in which biases, repetitions, aesthetic hierarchies, omissions, and privileges are manifested. Thus, analyzing a dataset is not just about inspecting images, but also about mapping the patterns of visibility and exclusion they generate.

 

Practical application:

 

Using the 50 previous definitions (especially the ontological, epistemological, and political ones), a taxonomic analysis model of the dataset can be built:

For example, images can be classified according to their lighting patterns, facial proportions, or dominant artistic style.

Measure the geographic or ethnic distribution of faces.

Formal redundancies that promote «neutral» or dominant styles can also be identified.

Compare the number of images with neutral backgrounds to images with environmental context.

Evaluate implicit taxonomies: what types of bodies, spaces, or gestures are overrepresented or absent.

This can be translated into critical visual tools or interfaces, such as

Visual bias maps that show the density of certain types of images.

Latency visualizations that show which types of images appear faster or with greater certainty in generation.

Dialog interfaces that confront the user with the genealogy of a generated image and show its training «ancestors«.

 

 

6. Examples of Works, Installations and Interfaces:

 

A. «The Training Room (interactive installation)

An immersive space that simulates being inside the dataset. Images are projected as a floating cloud, and each visitor can «select« an image to see what 1,000 other similar images accompany it. Each selection displays metrics such as «frequency,» «stylistic repetition,» «predominant race,» «geographic origin,« and «level of detail.

Inspired by model training rooms, but visually revealing invisible structures.

 

B. “Latent Discriminator” (critical web interface)

A website in which the user generates any image using AI. The same interface then returns a detailed analysis of which subsets of the dataset most influenced that image, including percentages, styles, semantic classes, detected biases, and possible omissions. It would be both an educational and critical tool. The user becomes aware that the generated image does not emerge from nowhere, but from a structured and deeply unbalanced field.

 

C. “The Delay Mirror” (algorithmic performance and installation)

A camera captures your face, and an AI attempts to generate your portrait. But the system intentionally introduces variable delays based on statistical criteria extracted from the dataset: if your facial style is less frequent in the dataset, the image takes longer. A graph shows the system’s level of “familiarity” with your face in real time. A critique of unequal representation and visibility privileges. Not all bodies are read with the same fluency.

 

D. «Genealogy of an Image« (Advanced Visualization)

When generating an image with AI, the system not only gives you the final image, but also displays a genealogy of the training data: key images, dominant styles, visible/invisible authors. Each image is accompanied by a «generative transparency« score and a «complexity of inheritance« score.

This makes it possible to visualize the debt that each generated image owes to its origins.

 

E. «Latency Atlas (critical cartography of visual generation)

A large screen displays a map of the world divided into cultural, ethnographic and aesthetic zones. For each region, the average time it takes an AI system to generate images associated with that culture or style is measured and displayed. A bar graph shows which zones are «generated« the fastest.

Direct exposure of algorithmic inequalities. Speed is also bias.

 

 

7. Research References:

Yuk Hui – The Question Concerning Technology in China

Benjamin Bratton – The Stack: describes how platforms reorganize forms of sovereignty and time.

Mark Hansen – Feed-Forward: On the Future of 21st-Century Media: explores how 21st-century media preprocess the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28 abril, 2025 In Archive, Art, Bioart, Denmark, Installation, Live Streaming, Performance, Radio, Soundart, Transcripts

Live Streamings from Dolmens: DNA-Performance-Installation-Soundart

 

Marcello Mercado

Live Streamings from Dolmens, 2011

 

DNA-Performance-Installation-Soundart

 

Flintinge, Denmark — 19/06/11 14:17 PM

 

 

 

 

 

Live Streamings from Dolmens unfolds as a quiet yet potent act of temporal entanglement. Beneath the ancient stones of Flintinge—dolmens whose origins drift somewhere between archaeology and speculation—the artist instigates a dialogue between the molecular traces of human evolution and the enduring architectures of prehistory.

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Fragments of the human genome, translated into sound, drift through the heavy air beneath the capstones, inhabiting the same acoustic cavities that may once have sheltered the dead. The sonification of DNA collapses boundaries between symbol and matter: what is usually confined to the microscopic becomes vibrational, inhabiting the body of the listener, the body of the earth, and the massive stone thresholds of the dolmens themselves.

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Rather than presenting the dolmens as inert relics, the work reactivates them as transmitters—live, vibrating sites that absorb and refract an ephemeral sonic flow. The installation escapes traditional notions of the archive; it does not merely preserve, but reanimates. Memory here is neither linear nor fixed; it unfolds across shifting materialities, weaving genomic remnants and megalithic architectures into a shared, unstable temporality.

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The choice of live streaming—the insistence on the present tense—infuses the work with an immediacy that resists the stasis often associated with historical monuments. Each broadcast is a fleeting, irreversible encounter, underscoring the precariousness of both biological and cultural continuity. The genome itself, an archive of survival and mutation, is no longer silent but rendered audible, insisting on its presence through sonic textures that evade easy recognition.

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The performance-installation constructs a landscape where informational residues become aesthetic material. Sound is not employed here as a representation of life, but as a direct extension of it—a mutable field where code, stone, air, and consciousness converge. It suggests a media archaeology that does not privilege technological linearity but embraces dispersed, contingent histories—histories that oscillate between the organic and the constructed, between deep time and the volatile present.

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In this terrain, the dolmens cease to be merely objects of contemplation; they become agents within a living system of transmission, modulating the genome’s silent speech into vibrations felt as much as heard. The body of the listener, the ancient stones, and the coded remnants of human life form a single, extended organism: an ephemeral, networked being that pulses across space and time.

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Ultimately, Live Streamings from Dolmens proposes an ecology of existence where the molecular, the monumental, and the ephemeral are co-constitutive. It gestures toward a reconfiguration of how we understand archives, rituals, and communications—favoring a model not of permanence, but of transmission, resonance, and becoming.

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DNA-performance-installation- soundart

(LIVE) 19/06/11 14:17 PM

Place: Flintinge, Denmark

Dolmen 2: 54° 44´23.99″ N 11° 47´23.36″ E

 

 

 

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28 abril, 2025 In 3D scanners, Archive, Art, Artist´s book, Bioart, Drawings, Exhibitions, Genome, Installation, Media, Music, paintings, Performance, Photography, Print, Publications, softart, Soundart, Videoart, Wien

Bestiary for the Minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera

 

 

THE DIGITAL SYNESTHESIA GROUP

The transdisciplinary DIGITAL SYNESTHESIA GROUP consists of project leaders Katharina Gsöllpointner (media theoretician), Ruth Schnell (artist), Romana Schuler (art historian) and artists Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel. During the research process invited artists and scientists will participate as special guests in the context of certain topics and/or project phases.

 

 

Marcello Mercado

 

Bestiary for the Minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera, 2016

 

2-channel video installation, artist’s book, public audio interaction, sound installation

 

 

 

1. Concept

In Bestiary for the Minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera, data becomes matter, and matter becomes music. This expansive project unfolds as a tactile, audible, and visual archive, preserving fragments of life at a moment when biodiversity itself is vanishing. Thousands of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes—echoes of evolutionary memory—are mined, transformed into sound, and materialized into 3D-printed notations. Each printed form, each vibration, each surface invites the audience into a synesthetic crossing where touch, sight, hearing, and proprioception merge into a new language of the senses.

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Rather than offering a closed composition, the work proposes an open, living structure, where technology and error, archive and entropy, sound and object are woven into an evolving fabric. The operatic form is no longer bound to vocality; instead, it extends into nonhuman agencies, enlisting the genetic residues of fungi, insects, mammals, and bacteria as unexpected co-authors. The traditional roles of composer and performer dissolve into a collective interaction between human bodies, machines, and biological matter.

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Through a meticulous process of data mining and translation, genetic sequences are read, converted into audio, shaped into three-dimensional sculptures, and inserted into a book-object that redefines what a musical score can be. Here, musical notation is not drawn but grown—imperfect, fragmented, vibrating with the material noise of its own genesis. The haptic surfaces printed in biodegradable plastic invite direct engagement: rubbing the sculptures with piezoelectric microphones generates new sounds, transforming the audience into performers who extend the life of the archive with each touch.

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In this sensorial ecology, seeing, touching, and hearing no longer operate as separate modalities but fuse into an expanded field of perception. The project inhabits the unstable zone between representation and performativity, where the archive is not preserved in stasis but activated through ephemeral acts of encounter. Glitches, printing errors, and incomplete forms are embraced as part of the work’s inner logic, mirroring the chaotic processes of mutation and decay that shape life itself.

.

Rather than offering stability, the opera proposes a shifting, porous system in which bodies, data, and artifacts intertwine. It is an invitation to rethink archives as dynamic ecosystems—mutable, tactile, and deeply entangled with the temporalities of both human and nonhuman lives. The speculative impulse at the core of the work gestures toward possible futures where preservation, memory, and creativity no longer obey linear or anthropocentric logics.

.

In Genomic Opera, the score is not merely to be read or interpreted; it must be felt, handled, listened to with the skin. The opera resists closure, insisting on the incomplete, the unstable, the open-ended. It is less a memorial to loss than a rehearsal for resilience—a sensorium in which the residues of life continue to mutate, resonate, and proliferate.

.

.

.

 

2. Primary sensory cross-modalities: TOUCH, VISION, AUDIO, PROPRIOCEPTION

 

In Bestiary for the Minds of the 21st Century, the senses are not merely pathways but forces of transformation. Touch summons sound, vision unfolds into tactile reliefs, hearing manifests as sculptural vibration. Genomic fragments—encoded in ancient, volatile alphabets of A, T, G, and C—spill beyond the limits of the readable, becoming textures, waves, and invisible resonances that the body can only partially grasp.

.

Each 3D-printed notation is a fossil of movement, a topography of sonic intensities frozen in plastic, waiting to be awakened by contact. Under the friction of fingertips, they whisper, crackle, and hum, offering secret frequencies to those willing to touch with intention. Listening becomes an act of caress; sight a dance over the uneven geographies of sound.

.

What was once hidden in molecular depths is rendered into surfaces, thresholds where biological memory, technological error, and human gesture converge. The printed forms refuse purity: glitches, collapses, and deformations are not failures but traces of a process where sensing and thinking intertwine. The body itself becomes a hybrid interface, vibrating with an archive that is no longer silent.

.

Proprioception—the silent sense of spatial embodiment—guides the interaction, as hands navigate invisible maps encoded in plastic veins. Here, the tactile is not an accessory to the visual but its twin; the audible is not an extension of the image but its counterpoint. The book-opera offers no clear front or back, no singular voice or score, but a labyrinth where music is materialized and material becomes musical.

.

In this expanded sensorium, data ceases to be abstract. It sinks into the skin, resonates in the bones, flickers behind the eyes. Each page of the opera becomes a threshold: between life and its representation, between archive and metamorphosis, between noise and meaning. The genomic residues, shaped by countless generations of life, now inhabit the fragile, unstable territory of human touch—ephemeral, porous, alive.

.

Steps:

1.

Recollection of multiple genomic sequences prokaryotic and eukaryotic

2.

A Text to Speech software will read the multiple genomic sequences

Transformation from TEXT to AUDIO FILES (Aprox. 10 hours audio)

Primary sensory cross-modalities: VISION, AUDIO

3.

Through algorithms the audio files will be transformed in 3D objects

Transformation from AUDIO to 3D OBJECTS

Primary sensory cross-modalities: VISION, AUDIO

4.

The 3D objects will be printed with a 3D Printer.

Transformation from 3D OBJECTS to multiple 3D (TACTILE) OBJECTS

Primary sensory cross-modalities: TOUCH, VISION

5.

The 3D printed objects will be pasted on music pentagram pages as

musical notations of a Partiture-Book

3D (TACTILE) OBJECTS + 3D OBJECT (TOUCH)

Primary sensory cross-modalities: TOUCH, VISION

6.

The 3D printed objects will be rubbed with 2 piezoelectric microphones

in order to generate new audio files.

Transformation from 3D (TACTILE) OBJECTS to AUDIO. PUBLIC

INTERACTION

Primary sensory cross-modalities: TOUCH, VISION, AUDIO

7.

Sounds recollections by a H4N microphone

8.

The new audio files will be collected by a SYNCHRONATOR device that

will enables to visualize the sounds.

Transformation from AUDIO to IMAGE.

Primary sensory cross-modalities: VISION, AUDIO

9.

Sounds as VIDEO

Transformation from AUDIO to VIDEO

Primary sensory cross-modalities: VISION, AUDIO

 

.

.

3. VIDEO

.

 

PASSPORT VIMEO: 1663

 

 

 

Within Bestiary for the Minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera, the public becomes an active agent in the generation of new sensory experiences. Equipped with handheld dynamic microphones, visitors are invited to drag or rub the microphones across the tactile 3D-printed genomic notations. As the microphone picks up the minute surface textures, it translates these physical gestures into bursts of electronic noise. These sounds, inherently glitchy and irregular, are immediately processed and visually transformed into color fields projected onto the gallery wall. Thus, the act of touch is synesthetically extended into the auditory and visual domains, creating a dynamic and ever-changing chromatic landscape generated by the audience’s own explorations.

.

Rather than simply observing, visitors sculpt ephemeral sound-images, becoming co-authors of a live, evolving opera of genomic noise. In this multisensory choreography, the genetic fragments materialize simultaneously as sound, color, and gesture, emphasizing an entangled relationship between body, data, and environment.

.

 

.

4. Bestiarium der Gedanken des 21. Jahrhunderts

   Synästhetische, genetische Oper in 4 Akten

   Die Musik ist vom Herrn Genmeister Marcello Mercado

   2015

 

Personen:

Genbanker 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 und 8 ……………………Basssänger

Protein_id ……………………………………………………..Sopran

Adenylyltransferase ………………………………………..Sopran

Gene_desc …………………………………………………….Sopran

Eukaryotischen Genoms ………………………………….Basssänger

Prokaryotischen Genoms ………………………………..Tenöre

Bacillus subtilis aldolase ………………………………….Tenöre

Ribosomale RNA, tRNA und andere RNA …………….Countertenöre

Die Besetzung der Rollen ist nach Mercados thematischem Verzeichnis:

Prokaryotischen Genoms ………………..Sgre. Genbanker 1 und Sgra. Blast 2

Eukaryotischen Genoms …………………Sgre. Genbanker 2 und Sgre. Gebanker 3

Ribosomale RNA, tRNA und andere RNA …..Sgre. Genbanker 4, 5, 6, 7,und 8

Protein_id……………………………………………….Sigra. Proteasa und Sigra. Locus

Gene_desc …………………………………………….Sigra. Alkaline Phosphatase

Bacillus subtilis aldolase ………………………….Sgre. Bacillusmandini

Adenylyltransferase ……………Sigra. ADP-heptose synthase von Cyclohydrolase

 

 

Inhalt:

Ouvertüre

 

Akt 1:

Chor Locus 7267896

Terzett Locus 326123

Duett Locus 424371

Chor Locus 037232

Arie Locus 70076

 

 

Akt 2:

3D Recitative und Arie

Duett (Idyll aconitate hydrase)

Chor (Prokaryotische Chor)

Marsch (Erlöschen!!!)

Sextett (Flammen!!! Salve Regina!!!)

 

 

Akt 3:

Bacillus Schmerz: Racheduett

3D Fanfare: Oh Plastik!

Protein_id Klage

Monolog der Gene_desc

Ribosomale RNA Todesmotiv

 

 

Akt 4:

Melodie der Abfälle

3D Drück Siegeshymne

Freiheits – Duett

Lactobacillus Menuett

Tragisches Schicksalsmotiv

Wahnsinnsszene des Genoms

Kußmotiv der sterbenden Genbanker

 

ENDE

 

 

 

5. Examples of some of the pages from the artist’s book:

 

 

Marcello Mercado

Bestiary for the minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera

DATA mining – 3D printed Genomic Opera

2-channel video installation + artist´s book + public audio interaction

ABS-plastic (ABS) and Polylactic acid (PLA) (bioplastic) on Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)

(copper colored) 3D printing errors (glitches) + 3D remains + Data Mining process on Genoms

from mammals, insects, fungi and bacteria converted into plastic 3D Printed objects

Opera – Artist´s Book, 90 pages,

40 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm,

2015

 

 

 

Marcello Mercado

Bestiary for the minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera

DATA mining – 3D printed Genomic Opera

2-channel video installation + artist´s book + public audio interaction

ABS-plastic (ABS) and Polylactic acid (PLA) (bioplastic) on Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)

(copper colored) 3D printing errors (glitches) + 3D remains + Data Mining process on Genoms

from mammals, insects, fungi and bacteria converted into plastic 3D Printed objects

Opera – Artist´s Book, 90 pages,

40 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm,

2015

 

 

Marcello Mercado

Bestiary for the minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera

DATA mining – 3D printed Genomic Opera

2-channel video installation + artist´s book + public audio interaction

ABS-plastic (ABS) and Polylactic acid (PLA) (bioplastic) on Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)

(copper colored) 3D printing errors (glitches) + 3D remains + Data Mining process on Genoms

from mammals, insects, fungi and bacteria converted into plastic 3D Printed objects

Opera – Artist´s Book, 90 pages,

40 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm,

2015

 

 

Marcello Mercado

Bestiary for the minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera

DATA mining – 3D printed Genomic Opera

2-channel video installation + artist´s book + public audio interaction

ABS-plastic (ABS) and Polylactic acid (PLA) (bioplastic) on Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)

(copper colored) 3D printing errors (glitches) + 3D remains + Data Mining process on Genoms

from mammals, insects, fungi and bacteria converted into plastic 3D Printed objects

Opera – Artist´s Book, 90 pages,

40 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm,

2015

 

 

 

–

 

6. The artist’s book:

 

Marcello Mercado

Bestiary for the minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera

DATA mining – 3D printed Genomic Opera

artist´s book

ABS-plastic (ABS) and Polylactic acid (PLA) (bioplastic) on Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)

(copper colored) 3D printing errors (glitches) + 3D remains + Data Mining process on Genoms

from mammals, insects, fungi and bacteria converted into plastic 3D Printed objects

Opera – Artist´s Book, 90 pages,

40 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm,

2015

 

 

 

7. Text by Siegfried Zielinski, 2015:

 

«Genomische Oper: Ein Bestiarium für Bewusstseine des 21. Jahrhunderts»

Lange Zeit funktionierte der Dualismus als bequeme Denkprothese. Wir unterschieden zwischen Künstlern, die ihre Gestaltungsprozesse wesentlich als Kopfgeburten generieren und solchen, die wesentlich aus dem Bauch heraus operieren. Begrifflicher und medientheoretisch ausgedrückt: Soft- und Hardwareorientierung wurden als oppositionelle, oftmals als antagonistische Haltungen interpretiert. Das war im 20. Jahrhundert die Entsprechung zum Körper-Seele-Dualismus des europäischen Mittelalters, der in der Moderne ausgefächert entfaltet worden ist.
In der subversiven Perspektive der Alchemie zum Beispiel wurde im Hinblick auf diesen Dualismus schon in der Vormoderne heftiger Widerspruch angemeldet. Dass die Seele selbst ganz und gar Fleisch wäre, weil die Materie nichts anderes als modifizierter Geist mit sehr unterschiedlichen Erscheinungsformen darstellt und folglich umgekehrt das Geistige filigrane Ausformulierungen des Materiellen darstellt, war aus der Tradition der vor-sokratischen Philosophie der alten Griechen bekannt. Die Adepten und Zauberlehrlinge der Alchemie machten eine experimentelle Praxis und eine geheimnisvoll und hermetisch begründete Weltanschauung daraus. Der lapis philosophorum, der Stein der Weisen, der in der letzten Stufe der Transmutation auf die immer noch gemeine Materie geworfen wird, um sie schließlich zu veredeln und mit meta-physischer Bedeutung aufzuladen, ist beides: pulverisierter Stoff der Verwandlung und Algorithmus im Sinne einer Order, die aus den naturwissenschaftlichen Experimenten heraus destilliert worden ist.

–

In einer solchen subversiven Tradition arbeitet der argentinische Künstler Marcello  Mercado mit radikaler Konsequenz wie schier überbordender Energie und Einbildungskraft. In einer der ersten Performances, die ich von ihm vor nahezu 20 Jahren sah, konfrontierte er die komplexen elektronischen und digitalen Maschinen einer millionenschweren Nachbearbeitungsanlage mit seinem nackten Körper und den Nöten der in ihn eingeschlossenen und herausdrängenden Psyche. Mit der ganzen Kraft seiner sinnlichen Erkenntnis und Erfahrung arbeitete er sich in das Generieren künstlicher Bild- und Tonwelten ein und entwickelte mit Das Kapital  einen gigantischen Werkzyklus, der kein Ende finden kann, weil er Obsession und folglich nicht linear, sondern dynamisch und chaotisch organisiert ist. Die visuelle und akustische Sprache, die M2 für seine extrem idiosynkratische Interpretation des Kapitals als einzelner politischer Ökonomie des Körpers  erfunden hat, ist ein ständiger Prozess der Transformation von Daten und Relationen in erfahrbare Sensationen und Aggressionen, die exzessiv wuchern und bereits eine Gesamtlaufzeit von weit über 40 Stunden erreicht haben.

–

Parallel zur Verwandlungsarbeit Das Kapital begann M2 in den letzten gut zehn Jahren, sich an genomischen Materialien zu versuchen. Sein Atelier wurde zum biologischen und chemischen Versuchslabor; er grub im Freien, extrahierte Lebenssäfte von Pflanzen und Tieren und begann, sie ebenso obsessiv aufzutrennen und zu mischen, wie er das mit den Datenpaketen seines Computers und den aufgezeichneten Materialien seiner Analogmaschinen tut. Der schwule Kino-Mythos Fassbinder und der heterosexuelle Fluxus-Mythos Vostell waren real nie zusammen. M2 mischte die genetischen Informationen der beiden vermittels von Extrakten, die er aus Blumen von ihren Gräbern gewann,  und vereinigte sie in Zeichnungen, die er mit den gewonnen Genommaterialien realisierte. Die Grenzen zwischen Virtualität und Realität verschwimmen.

–

In seinem Bestiarium für Bewusstseine des 21. Jahrhunderts führt M2 nun verschiedene Stränge seiner Arbeit aus den letzten Jahrzehnten zusammen und treibt sie so zu einem Höhepunkt. Wie beim Kapital, das er als Oratorium konzipiert und für das er mehrere  Libretti schrieb, treibt er sein Experiment mit der Oper als einer ästhetischen Gattung voran, in der Präzision und Leidenschaft auf besondere Weise miteinander dialogisieren. Klänge werden in visuell wahrnehmbare Muster übersetzt. Im Unterschied zu den legendären Figuren Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladnis aus dem 18. Jahrhundert transformiert er allerdings die zeitlichen Ausdehnungen und Intervalle im Hörbaren nicht nur auf der Fläche, sondern in dreidimensionalen Objekten. Die Klänge werden nach ihrer Verwandlung in Datenpakete als längliche Skulpturen in schreienden Farben ausgedruckt, die auf einer Notation als wellige Informationsstrukturen im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes erfassbar sind. Mit piezo-elektronischen Mikrophonen als Interfaces kann der Besucher der Oper die Oberflächen des Materials abtasten, der experimentelle Apparat übersetzt die dadurch neu entstehenden Klänge wiederum in graphische Strukturen und macht die ursprüngliche Komposition nun als Ergebnis taktiler Begegnungen im Ton-Bild-Werk noch einmal und ganz anders erfahrbar.

–

Dass M2 mit dieser Genomischen Oper einen Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung des Variantenreichtums unserer biologischen Welt leisten will, den er im zeitgenössischen Standardisierungsschub bedroht sieht, ist eine zusätzliche Leseebene, die zu kennen aber keine notwendige Voraussetzung für den ästhetischen und intellektuellen Genuss des Werkes ist. Wie in Das Kapital entfaltet sich sein Drängen in die nicht zu disziplinierende Heterogenität als Akrobatenakt auf dem Drahtseil, das zwischen Programm und Imagination, zwischen Vorschrift und aus der Zensur drängenden Phantasie über dem Abgrund unserer Wirklichkeit aufgespannt ist.»

–

 

Siegfried Zielinski, Berlin 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Exhibition I, 2016:

 

DIGITAL SYNESTHESIA Exhibition

Opening at Angewandte Innovation Laboratory in Vienna on March 10, 2016

 

Angewandte Innovation Laboratory
Franz Josefs Kai 3
1010 Vienna, Austria

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

.

9. Exhibition II, 2016:

 

 

 

 

16.05.2016 – 22.05.2016

 

 

ISEA2016: 22nd International Symposium on Electronic Art

 

 

ISEA International Foundation
C. Kouwenbergzoom 107
3065 KC Rotterdam
The Netherlands

 

 

ISEA International Headquarters
University of Brighton
Faculty of Arts
School of Art, Design and Media
Grand Parade
Brighton
BN2 0JY
United Kingdom

 

 

 

10. Book, 2016:

 

Digital Synesthesia

A Model for the Aesthetics of Digital Art

 

Edited by: Katharina Gsöllpointner , Ruth Schnell and Romana Karla Schuler

 

De Gruyterbrill

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

27 abril, 2025 In Archive, Art, Bioart, Brühl, Compost, Genome, Installation, Media, Performance, Radio, Soundart

Making consistent volatile ideas by broadcasting bio-information through plants, DNA, worms and Radio Frequencies

 

 

Marcello Mercado

Making consistent volatile ideas by broadcasting bio-information through plants, DNA, worms and Radio Frequencies, 2007

 

Bio-Performance / Bio-Installation, 2007

 

 

In Making consistent volatile ideas by broadcasting bio-information through plants, DNA, worms and Radio Frequencies, Marcello Mercado crafts a meditation on mortality, memory, and the biological archive, unfolding across two interconnected actions in Kassel and Brühl in 2007. Initiated by the extraction of DNA from red poppies gathered from Sanja Iveković’s Poppy Field at Documenta Kassel, and culminating in its dissolution into the aquatic habitat of Biomphalaria glabrata worms, the project weaves together ephemeral transmission, organic processes, and technological mediation.

.

At its core, the work proposes a volatile circuit of memory: by transmitting the worms’ own genomic sequences back to them via walkie-talkies, Mercado reenacts an ancient gesture—the whispered reminder of mortality to a triumphant general—reinscribed into the molecular language of life. Rather than offering a static image of death, the piece stages a living, recursive inscription, where information becomes both a medium and a memento.

.

The project aligns with ideas of media deep time, where archives are not merely human inventions but are entangled with biological and environmental substrata. Rather than preserving information, Memento Mori Genómico lets it mutate and circulate, embodying a processual temporality that challenges linear notions of memory and death. The unstable transmission through radio frequencies mirrors the instability inherent in biological memory itself, where error, mutation, and dissolution are constitutive forces.

.

Drawing implicitly from contemporary curatorial thinking that sees archives as dynamic, entropic systems—never fixed, always partial—the performance dissolves the separation between biological material, technological mediation, and cultural residue. It suggests, as certain strands of contemporary theory have proposed, that every act of storing, transferring, and sharing information is also an act of transformation and loss.

.

In this fluid landscape, biological entities are no longer passive subjects of observation but active carriers of information, echoing broader shifts in contemporary bio-art towards performative, unstable, and relational practices. Mercado’s choice to use the fragile and modest technology of walkie-talkies further displaces the narrative of technological mastery, foregrounding instead a poetics of vulnerability and transmission error.

.

Between Kassel’s global stage and the quieter, hidden life of Brühl, Memento Mori Genómico moves between monumental cultural time and the microscopic temporality of organic life. It inhabits a space where memory is not monumentalized but continuously renegotiated—where archives are not preservations of presence, but processes of inevitable metamorphosis.

In the end, Mercado’s work suggests that mortality, memory, and information share a deeper kinship: all are fleeting, porous, and materially bound. All are, inevitably, transmitted with noise.

.

Marcello Mercado
Making consistent volatile ideas by broadcasting bio-information
through plants, DNA, worms and Radio Frequencies, 2007
Bio-Performance – Bio-Installation,
04′ 00″
stereo 4:3 colour

 

 

 

 

27 abril, 2025 In Archive, Art, Bologna, Exhibitions, Installation, Language, Performance, Robot05 Bologna, softart, Soundart, Videoart

DELETE

 

 

Marcello Mercado

DELETE

Interactive Video Installation

.

In DELETE, language ceases to be a transparent medium for communication and becomes both subject and residue. Conceived in 2012 as an interactive video installation, the project reflects on the impossibility of truly erasing information within digital and mental architectures. Instead, it proposes the invention of a maintenance-language: an operational system that paradoxically seeks to erase by generating a new linguistic code.

.

At the core of the installation lies a speculative alphabet composed of 210 graphemes, each detached from conventional meaning. A grapheme in DELETE is not an «A» or a «B,» but a carrier of fluid semantic densities—philosophical texts, visual data, noise, or pure absence. The work articulates what Simon Sheikh has termed a “linguistic act,” wherein the action of writing, speaking, or coding constitutes an autonomous mode of being rather than a tool of communication. In this context, DELETE manifests not merely as a representation of language, but as an ongoing event of linguistic exhaustion and reconfiguration.

.

Throughout the performance-installation, the artist engages in a glossolalic duel: seated before the audience, typing on a laptop while simultaneously articulating invented sounds. Language here is dismantled, compressed, re-coded, and finally suspended in a liminal state between visibility and erasure. The public is invited to participate, not by deciphering meaning, but by contributing their own residues of thought—thus enacting a collective maintenance of mental debris.

.

This mechanism resonates with Beatrix Ruf’s reflection on contemporary art’s inclination toward «contaminated systems,» where meaning is always already inflected, unstable, and exposed to collapse. DELETE embraces such contamination, understanding deletion not as a return to purity, but as a continuous cycle of residue production. The act of «deleting» becomes, paradoxically, a generative force—a production of new illegible archives.

.

The philosophical tension between inscription and annihilation is further underscored by the use of digital tools: projectors, laptops, audio systems, and satellite data streams, all forming a fragile ecology where deletion leaves inevitable traces. In this sense, Daniel Birnbaum’s notion of «chronology loops»—moments where linear time folds back onto itself—is mirrored in DELETE: every attempt at erasure re-inscribes itself, creating new temporalities within the act of forgetting.

.

Through this critical engagement with language and digital memory, DELETE also echoes the concerns articulated by curators such as Hans Ulrich Obrist and Maria Lind regarding the unstable thresholds between performance, documentation, and residual materiality. What remains after the gesture of deletion is not emptiness but a sedimented field of semiotic debris—a landscape of ghost-meanings.

.

Finally, the performative logic of DELETE aligns with the traditions of language-performance outlined by RoseLee Goldberg, yet extends them into the space of algorithmic and infrastructural critique. By treating deletion as both a technical impossibility and a poetic necessity, Mercado confronts us with the ultimate paradox of the digital condition: that to erase is, inevitably, to create.

.

 

Marcello Mercado

DELETE/ Löschen, 2012

HD single channel video, 10min 05sec

B/W Stereo, 16:9

Interactive Video Installation

.

 

 

 

 

 

Prix Ars Electronica 2012

30.08.2012 – 03.09.2012

Price: Anerkennung – Honorary Mention
Category: Interactive Art
Marcello Mercado
Löschen/ DELETE [+]

ARS ELECTRONICA ARCHIVE – PRIX

 

 

 

 

DELETE, Performed by Marcello Mercado, Palazzo Re Enzo (Bologna), Call4roBOt, 2005

 

 

 

Marcello Mercado, DELETE, Installation, La Ira de Dios Gallery; Buenos Aires, 2014

.

.

20 junio, 2023 In Art, Beuys, Mercedes Benz, Performance

How to explain to a dead mole the difference between…? Performance, 2001

 

 

 

Marcello Mercado

How to explain to a dead mole the difference between a 2000 Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class SLK 320 2dr convertible and a 2001 Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class SLK320 2dr Roadster?

Performance

Köln, 2001

.

 

In 2001 I acquired a taxidermied mole at a fair. This seemingly trivial object became the catalyst for a performance that directly addresses themes of communication, misinterpretation, and the limits of knowledge. Drawing on the legacy of Joseph Beuys‘ 1965 performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, my work explores the intersection of art, nature, and the human impulse to rationalize the irrational.

Beuys‘ iconic act of explaining art to a dead hare, while a highly symbolic gesture, was not intended to explain in the traditional sense. Rather, it was an act of contemplation in which communication transcended the spoken word and embraced the spiritual, the tactile, and the deeply personal. Beuys‘ performance was rooted in the understanding that art is not a product to be consumed, but a process of inquiry, a question that is never fully answered. In this respect, my piece takes its cue from Beuys, although I shift the focus to the absurdity of a seemingly futile task.

The mole, much like Beuys‘ hare, becomes a conduit for a deeper engagement with the nature of explanation, knowledge, and power. In my performance, I stand in front of the dead mole and try to «explain» the difference between two models of luxury cars in a detached and almost scientific tone. The absurdity of explaining a highly materialistic concept – an automotive distinction – to an animal that is both dead and incapable of understanding mirrors the futile attempt to communicate the incommunicable.

This act, in its apparent triviality, questions the very premise of communication. It reflects a fundamental tension in contemporary art and culture: the constant drive to explain, articulate, and define, while constantly confronting the unexplainable, the untranslatable. What does it mean to explain something to an audience or an object that will never truly understand?

From the perspective of Siegfried Zielinski’s variantology, this performance can be seen as an exploration of the epistemological limits of technology and art. Zielinski’s exploration of non-linear histories and alternative technological narratives provides a theoretical framework for understanding the absurdity of the performance: the act of explaining is not simply about the transmission of information, but about the very possibility of its existence. In a sense, the mole stands as a mute witness to the gaps in communication, a metaphor for the incomplete and fractured narratives that define both art and life.

As curators such as Hans Ulrich Obrist and Okwui Enwezor have pointed out, contemporary art is often less about providing definitive answers and more about creating spaces for reflection and critical engagement. My work, like Beuys‘ performances, does not resolve the tension between knowing and not knowing, but rather invites the viewer into a space of perpetual questioning. It asks: What is the nature of explanation? To whom do we explain, and why?

In this sense, the performance goes beyond the specific objects involved (the mole and the cars) and opens up a broader dialogue about the relationships between people, objects, and knowledge. It challenges viewers to reconsider their assumptions about communication, art, and the nature of understanding itself.

Maria Lind’s exploration of contemporary art as a process of constant negotiation aligns with this work, as the performance itself is not an attempt to provide an answer, but to push the boundaries of what can be communicated. Similarly, Bruno Latour’s ideas on actor-network theory suggest that knowledge is always a product of relationships – relationships between people, things and technologies. In this performance, the mole becomes a node in a network of meanings, and the explanation is not for the mole, but for the human observer who must grapple with the absurdity of trying to make sense of it all.

Ultimately, How to Explain to a Dead Mole… is an exploration of the paradoxes inherent in the act of communication: the simultaneous desire to explain and the inherent impossibility of truly explaining. By using a seemingly nonsensical act as a vehicle for inquiry, the performance becomes an open–ended investigation into the limits of knowledge, language, and the human drive to categorize and control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Gerrman)

Wie erklärt man einem toten Maulwurf den Unterschied zwischen einem Mercedes-Benz SLK-Klasse SLK 320 2-Türer Cabriolet (Baujahr 2000) und einem Mercedes-Benz SLK-Klasse SLK 320 2-Türer Roadster (Baujahr 2001)?

Performance, Köln,  2001

 

2001 kaufte ich auf einem Jahrmarkt einen ausgestopften Maulwurf. Dieses scheinbar triviale Objekt wurde zum Auslöser einer Performance, die sich unmittelbar mit den Themen Kommunikation, Fehlinterpretation und den Grenzen des Wissens auseinandersetzt. Ausgehend von Joseph Beuys’ Performance „Wie erklärt man einem toten Hasen die Bilder“ aus dem Jahr 1965 untersucht meine Arbeit die Schnittstelle zwischen Kunst, Natur und dem menschlichen Drang, das Irrationale zu rationalisieren.

 

Beuys’ ikonischer Akt, einem toten Hasen die Kunst zu erklären, war zwar eine hochsymbolische Geste, zielte aber nicht auf Erklärung im traditionellen Sinne. Es war vielmehr ein Akt der Kontemplation, in dem die Kommunikation über das gesprochene Wort hinausging und das Geistige, das Taktile und das zutiefst Persönliche umfasste. Beuys’ Performance wurzelte in dem Verständnis, dass Kunst kein konsumierbares Produkt ist, sondern ein Prozess des Suchens, eine Frage, die nie vollständig beantwortet werden kann. In diesem Punkt lehne ich mich an Beuys an, indem ich den Fokus auf die Absurdität einer scheinbar sinnlosen Aufgabe verlagere.

 

Der Maulwurf wird, ähnlich wie Beuys’ Hase, zum Kanal für eine tiefere Auseinandersetzung mit dem Wesen von Erklärung, Wissen und Macht. In meiner Performance stehe ich vor dem toten Maulwurf und versuche in einem distanzierten, fast wissenschaftlichen Ton den Unterschied zwischen zwei Modellen eines Luxusautos zu „erklären“. Die Absurdität, ein höchst materialistisches Konzept – einen automobilen Unterschied – einem toten und unfähigen Tier erklären zu wollen, spiegelt den vergeblichen Versuch wider, das Unvermittelbare zu kommunizieren.

 

Dieser Akt stellt in seiner scheinbaren Trivialität die Prämisse der Kommunikation selbst in Frage. Er spiegelt eine grundlegende Spannung in der zeitgenössischen Kunst und Kultur wider: den ständigen Drang zu erklären, zu artikulieren und zu definieren, während man gleichzeitig ständig mit dem Unerklärlichen, dem Unübersetzbaren konfrontiert ist. Was bedeutet es, einem Publikum oder einem Objekt etwas zu erklären, das es nie wirklich verstehen wird?

 

Aus der Perspektive von Siegfried Zielinskis Variantologie kann diese Performance als eine Untersuchung der epistemologischen Grenzen von Technologie und Kunst verstanden werden. Zielinskis Auseinandersetzung mit nichtlinearen Erzählungen und alternativen technologischen Narrativen bietet einen theoretischen Rahmen, um die Absurdität der Performance zu verstehen: Beim Erklären geht es nicht nur um die Vermittlung von Information, sondern um die Möglichkeit ihrer Existenz. In gewisser Weise ist der Maulwurf ein stummer Zeuge der Kommunikationslücken, eine Metapher für die unvollständigen und gebrochenen Erzählungen, die sowohl die Kunst als auch das Leben prägen.

 

Wie Kuratoren wie Hans Ulrich Obrist und Okwui Enwezor betont haben, geht es in der zeitgenössischen Kunst oft weniger darum, endgültige Antworten zu liefern, als Räume für Reflexion und kritische Auseinandersetzung zu schaffen. Wie Beuys’ Performances löst auch meine Arbeit die Spannung zwischen Wissen und Nichtwissen nicht auf, sondern lädt den Betrachter in einen Raum fortwährender Fragen ein. Sie fragt: Was ist das Wesen des Erklärens? Wem erklären wir etwas und warum?

 

In diesem Sinne geht die Performance über die konkreten Objekte (den Maulwurf und die Autos) hinaus und eröffnet einen breiteren Dialog über die Beziehungen zwischen Menschen, Objekten und Wissen. Sie fordert den Betrachter heraus, seine Annahmen über Kommunikation, Kunst und das Wesen des Verstehens zu überdenken.

 

Maria Linds Auseinandersetzung mit zeitgenössischer Kunst als einem Prozess ständiger Verhandlung steht im Einklang mit dieser Arbeit, da die Performance selbst nicht versucht, eine Antwort zu geben, sondern die Grenzen des Kommunizierbaren zu erweitern. Ebenso legen Bruno Latours Ideen zur Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie nahe, dass Wissen immer ein Produkt von Beziehungen ist – Beziehungen zwischen Menschen, Dingen und Technologien. In dieser Performance wird der Maulwurf zum Knotenpunkt eines Bedeutungsnetzwerks, und die Erklärung richtet sich nicht an den Maulwurf, sondern an den menschlichen Betrachter, der sich mit der Absurdität des Versuchs auseinandersetzen muss, all dem einen Sinn zu geben.

 

Letztlich ist „How to Explain to a Dead Mole…“ eine Untersuchung der Paradoxien, die dem Akt der Kommunikation innewohnen: der gleichzeitige Wunsch zu erklären und die inhärente Unmöglichkeit, wirklich zu erklären. Indem ein scheinbar sinnloser Akt als Vehikel für die Untersuchung verwendet wird, wird die Performance zu einer offenen Untersuchung der Grenzen des Wissens, der Sprache und des menschlichen Drangs nach Kategorisierung und Kontrolle.