Chant III

Le Poulpe au regard de soi(e)

The perfect image is an insult. Smooth surface, mathematical silence, no flaw. Born in the sterile cage of an algorithm, it knows nothing of doubt, of dust, of time. It believes itself whole. It believes itself finished.

But the world rusts.

So we opened the valves. Air, water, metal. Corrosion settled over the blues of the cyanotype like a slow leprosy. Chemicals burned the too-obedient surface. Contours gave way. The image began to suffocate.

This is not an accident. It is a necessity.

Entropy becomes a form of writing. An organic answer to the fixity of code. Where the machine generates without end, matter recalls that all things decay.

Rust does what the algorithm cannot.

It destroys. It transforms. It lets the image die so that it may become real again.

Chant III subjects the cyanotypes to corrosion and chemical alteration. The generated image is deliberately destabilized by matter, entropy and oxidation acting as forces of transformation. Three images, each printed seven times, exposed to the process in varying degrees.

Cyanotypes on Mitsumata paper, rust, caustic soda, 36 × 52 cm.