The play 'Scroll’ by Daniel Canogar joins technology and art with algorithms from the El Corte Inglés website

As part of the activities developed during the recent International Contemporary Art Fair (ARCH) in Madrid, this artistic project refers to the evolution of retail, from traditional storefront to online commerce.

in 2020 sixteen years have passed since Cultural Area of El Corte Inglés resume the program of artistic interventions, which has its origin in the windows of the centers of Madrid and Barcelona of the sixties.

For this reason and as part of the activities of ARCOmadrid 2020, which has just been held in the capital, the artist Daniel Canogar has created the work Scroll, which refers to the evolution of retail, from traditional storefront to online commerce. An artistic project curated by Paloma Martín Llopis, that has been exhibited these days in the windows of El Corte Inglés de Preciados and Serrano, in Madrid.

Through a barcode-based algorithm, Scroll abstracts the most demanded products from the website of this shopping center until composing a generative image that follows the data chain and is created in real time.

For this project, Cultural Area of El Corte Inglés has had the technological collaboration of Intel and Lg. The supply and installation of the distribution equipment of AV signals and content players has been carried out by the company Ruybesa, also responsible for the electrical installation, configured sequentially, of the windows of El Corte Inglés de Preciados designed by Daniel Canogar.

The work of this artist has also been seen, in video format, in exterior locations such as on the façade of the center of El Corte Inglés de Castellana, on the big screen of the Plaza de Callao (both in Madrid), as well as on various screens of its shopping centers in other cities in Spain and Portugal.

Generative creation

Scroll is a generative creation that transforms, through an algorithm, the images of the products on the El Corte Inglés website until they become a flow of abstract images. "Generative art is alive, never offers the same composition and reacts by transforming, thanks to an algorithm, the information you are receiving".

The technical support of the shop windows is a huge collage of recycled TV screens of different sizes, about eleven units per space (in the case of the Preciados showcase there are a total of seven spaces, with 82 Screens).

With a random composition, Daniel Canogar has created volumes that make the work take on a sculptural dimension. The chromatic range used are vibrant and saturated colors.

As explained by the artist, "the screens become the framework of the work and at the same time it becomes sculpture". In this work have intervened from programmers, engineers and computer scientists, to artists and architects.

Canogar believes that this collaboration with El Corte Inglés allows him "not only to work with such a significant company in our country, but also work in the shop windows, a medium that I find very interesting in the face of contact with the public".

The projection of the windows of El Corte Inglés de Preciados is proposed as a unique work, separated only from one showcase to another in a physical way. The work is read horizontally, from left to right, and continue the reading in the following showcase, so up to seven spaces. Creation is infinite in time since it is a generative and algorithmic work.

 

The evolution of retail in abstract animation

Canogar uses the products shown on the website of El Corte Inglés and reflects, through abstraction, on the evolution of retail and the very process of change in which the current market is immersed.

"There is currently a change," explains the artist., a transition between online shopping, that is competing enormously with the way the physical store had to communicate with the customer, I mean, the showcase. This project makes an analysis of that transition. That's why I use data, information from the Website of El Corte Inglés, creating an abstraction that wants to collect the flow of that information. To do this, I use algorithms that serve as a bridge between the physical space that is the showcase and the new online space that is reinventing the retail world".

Cultural initiative

Sixteen years have passed since Ámbito Cultural de El Corte Inglés, coinciding with the International Contemporary Art Fair, will initiate a program of artistic interventions that has the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Sport, as well as the City Council and the Community of Madrid.

This action has its origin in the artistic processes of the sixties carried out in the centers of Madrid and Barcelona, when the company's shop windows of both cities became true works of contemporary art, thus approaching the general public. in 1963 Manrique participated, Thousands, Wheel, Sempere and Serrano and in 1965 Guinovart, Hernandez Pijuan, Rafols Casamada, Subirachs, Tharrats and Todó. Both samples were reissued in 2005 and 2014, respectively.

Other articles on Cultural Area El Corte Inglés, ARCOmadrid2020, Daniel Canogar, Intel, Lg, LG Spain, Ruybesa