verticalelement.faith
Scrolling Site Towards Endless Finite
Following the invitation to contribute to the issue of Maarav dedicated to Ezra Orion, artist Noa Giniger created Vertical Element, a website that enables infinite scrolling down (or perhaps up) the slopes of the virtual world: http://verticalelement.faith/. Influenced by Orion’s writing and work engaging in the desire to attain the sublime, and the attraction to the vertical element, Giniger presents her perception of these ideas in the twenty-first century: a launch site that enables the user to experience infinite ascent/descent.
Visitors to Vertical Element are first exposed to an image of an inverse mountain, an image taken from the world of emojicons symbolizing Mount Fuji in Japan. At the bottom the scroll bar begins its countdown – in pixel units – towards the zero point, and from there an infinite ascent/descent into the measured and numbered (in ascending order) void. The scroll operates at a fixed internal rhythm, and while our manual intervention is possible – up, down – inactivity engenders surrender to adjusting direction and speed, which are preset.
The mountain image itself constitutes a tribute to Orion, especially his Annapurna project, on which he worked for almost two decades of his life. But in Giniger’s case the mountain is inverse, and the launch that begins at the summit serves as a geological excavation towards an unattainable virtual bottom, “towards the infinity of universes”.
The project is the third and final part of Noa Giniger’s online trilogy, NoTimeForNostalgia[dot]Now, comprising two websites: recalculatingroute.info, absolutecountdown.com
Vertical Element developed following Giniger’s visit to Ezra Orion’s studio, Sde Boker, April 1970:
Measuring distances (overview)
Measuring Distances (detail)
Shelf Life (horizontal view)
