On Barry X Ball's Serving Suggestions,

by Jean-Pierre Criqui

The history of the use of computers by artists - not to be muddled with the history of any old "computer art" - will one day inevitably be written, and there can be no doubt that Barry X Ball will have a special place in it. Since 1990, for almost all his works, this artist uses a computer-assisted drafting program, which enables him to draw up the "specifications" and "terms of reference" governing the production of his works. This set of various plans, diagrams and instructions, which in some cases adds up to fifty odd pages for just one piece, marks the end of the design phase : "the ecstasy (i.e. the conceptual work) is finished early on in the creative process" - says Ball, the remainder resulting from what he calls "fabrication agony", during which the artist himself, his assistants, and, where relevant, sub-contractors will construct the technically perfect objects thus designed with painstaking care. Ball also uses computer programmes to produce sorts of models on a 1/1 scale of his works, made of paper and mylar, which he then uses during the hanging of the works to try out their final placing in as easy a way as possible, or alternatively to monitor certain machines used for the adjustment of different parts. The computer is in effect omnipresent in his work, but in an as it were imperceptible way.
The project for Tr@verses marks a first step towards virtuality. The seven sculptures reproduced here belong to a series started in 1995, and currently still in progress. Made up of one or two blocks of composite material (corian or surell), they are presented suspended on metal cables. Their invariably two-coloured structures result from the glued assembly of as many black or white modules (click if you want to get a more precise idea). With the help of two computer scientists - Ruel Espejo and Sonya Allin - Barry X Ball has introduced them into certain famous places in European art history - places which are not at all likely to accommodate such objects in any reasonably near future. To be as convincing as possible, the illusion also creates major distortions of scale in relation to the real dimensions of the works and the places occupied by them (Sculpture 2, for example, set within the Pantheon, takes on a volume far greater than that of the building). Again with a view to giving the images a maximum impact, all the sculptures have thus been "re-rendered" by computer, and in so doing the artist has relieved them of certain details (this is the case with Sculpture 5, projected in the Library of Pope Sixtus V without its cyanoacrylate perforations).The result has something at once mysterious, futuristic and mildly humorous about it (it is difficult, at such encounters, not to think of the fallen monolith among the décor of an 18th century-style bedroom at the end of 2001, A Space Odyssey). It also suggests the possibility of an interesting variation on the theme of the make-believe museum, which is dear to so many 20th century artists.