Fluctuant Factuality

Considering the overwhelming volume of information in today’s world, and the amount of history that has gone into making each detail meaningful, it is hardly ever obvious why a certain squiggle of shapes signifies a specific word and meaning, a specific composition of forms and materials is widely recognised as a specific object, and certain combinations of colours and texts differentiate advertising from graphic design. Using the mass of unsolicited commercials received at his home in Eindhoven as starting point, Benjamin Ø. Solløs’s performative machine computes permutations of a set of material characteristics to emphasise the sometimes arbitrary relationship with the meaning ascribed to them.