Techno Memory 00003 (Minimal Existence)

Bernhard Living - Techno Memory 00003 (Minimal Existence)

In einem Augenblick. How brief is the shortest experience, and how short is the briefest thought, which could be a single synaptic firing, but that probably wouldn’t be enough to think of something. There’s evidence that the human eye can detect a single photon, but at least five or six photons are required for the brain to register the event as an experience. “Did you see that?” - but then it’s already gone. And what is the shortest sound or composition, what would that be? Perhaps it’s the single cycle of a waveform that’s perceived as a click, or could this composition only exist as a thought experiment, a thought composition, “Imagine the shortest sound that could ever exist.” In comparison, Kazimir Malevich’s collage piece Elements of Architecton (After 1924) is monumental. However, it’s still very small, and at three centimetres square is the the size of a large postage stamp. It’s made of white, now discoloured, card and plaster, and there’s a small motif of a black lightening flash just off centre. Malevich’s artwork is both ‘painting’ and ‘sculpture’. It’s also an architectural model, and one that’s fragile and elusive. Only the briefest of texts is required to describe it. The shortest story or poem that makes any kind of sense would be one that’s been reduced to a single word, such as the conceptual art ‘poem’, Unknowable by the artist Ian Wilson. Both artworks are extreme in their brevity, perhaps moving toward some kind of end point, a zero moment of minimal existence.