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Art installation “Monolith” uses digital screens to question our reliance on them

"How will we confront the integration of bodies and devices? Is this the last generation of humans who are not digitally transformed?"

Madrid-based public artist SpY has taken over Barcelona with his latest piece. Titled “Monolith”, the piece was unveiled during the Llum BCN Festival, and is intended as a commentary on how we interact with the digital screens that seem to have become omnipresent in our day to day lives. Composed of a soaring LED pillar that displays a pattern of graphics only made of SpY’s red diffusive hues, the artist evokes a feeling of wonder and melancholy.

Monolith is a constructed to be an audiovisual experience, with audio cues placed by the artist to have the giant, vertically-oriented LED pillar feel like a “magical mirror.” The name of the piece, and indeed the installation its self, is inspired the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the artist stating, “The piece pays homage to Kubrick’s classic film ‘2001’, and is presented as a metaphor of today’s pervasive screens. The screen is the magical mirror in which we build our personas, and where an ever larger part of our reality takes form. It has become integrated into our lives to an extent that, until fairly recently, was still unconceivable.”

See also: Hyundai looking into integrating LED displays into their vehicle grilles

“‘Monolith’ draws into question this new reality and the encroaching intrusion into our personal information. Are we already in the time when humans become data? How will we confront the integration of bodies and devices? Is this the last generation of humans who are not digitally transformed?”

 

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