V.O.W N°21 (Video Of the Week, 23 - 29 May 2011)

The video ''Content is Queen'' by Barcelona based Sergio Albiac explores a generative dialogue utilizing video as the source of color to depict the Queen. This democratic process ''live'' paints through fragments of videos at different sizes. These fragments act as pixels on a digital canvas constantly overlapping, shaping and changing the final image the artist wants to convey. You see crops of things that you might recognize but never fully giving you the entire video in order for the focus to become the image as a whole. Loosely drawing the edges of her facial features, you begin to delineate an image but it is never quite completed. As video fragments continue to populate and break down in size, the image continues to  sharpen.

Content is Queen // A generative video painting by Sergio Albiac

"My usual working process involves writing computer programs that generate images. Once my idea is translated into computer code, I search and select the visual results that better express my point. Sometimes, these generative images are the final work and sometimes I use the programs as an electronic sketchbook to visualize my concept before I transfer it into a painting." Sergio Albiac

This investigative process breaks down the traditional elements of painting and pushes the limits on contemporary methods to art and dialogue. What differs this from other techniques like video collage and video mosaic is that Albiac's technique uses regions of the video at different sizes to articulate two dialogues, the static (Queen) and the dynamic (videos) at the same time, truly moving the viewer in and out of the piece.