At the work 'Scroll’ by Daniel Canogar unites technology and art with algorithms from the El Corte Inglés website

As part of the activities carried out during the recent International Contemporary Art Fair (ARCO) in Madrid, This artistic project refers to the evolution of retail, from the traditional showcase to online commerce.

In 2020 sixteen years have passed since Cultural Area of ​​El Corte Inglés will resume the program of artistic interventions, which has its origin in the shop windows of the centers of Madrid and Barcelona in 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 the traditional showcase to online commerce. An artistic project curated by Paloma Martín Llopis, that has been displayed these days in the windows of El Corte Inglés de Preciados and Serrano, in Madrid.

Through an algorithm based on the barcode, Scroll abstracts the most in-demand products from the website of this shopping center until it composes 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 y LG. The supply and installation of AV signal distribution equipment and content players has been carried out by the company Ruybesa, Also responsible for the electrical installation, configured sequentially, of the El Corte Inglés de Preciados window displays 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 in Castellana, on the big screen in the Plaza de Callao (both in Madrid), as well as on various screens in its shopping centers in other cities in Spain and in Portugal..

Generative creation

Scroll It is a generative creation that transforms, through an algorithm, 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 television screens of different sizes, about eleven units per space (In the case of the Preciados showcase there are a total of seven spaces, con 82 screens).

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

As the artist explained, “the screens become the frame of the work and at the same time turns it into sculpture”. Programmers have intervened in this work, engineers and computer scientists, to artists and architects.

Canogar considers that this collaboration with El Corte Inglés allows it “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 terms of contact with the public”.

The projection of the windows of El Corte Inglés de Preciados is presented as a unique work, separated only from one shop window to another physically. The work is read horizontally, from left to right, and continue reading in the next window, 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 El Corte Inglés website and reflects, through abstraction, about the evolution of retail and the process of change in which the current market is immersed.

“Currently there is a change – explains the artist –, a transition between online shopping, which is competing enormously with the way the physical store had to communicate with the customer, that is to say, the showcase. This project analyzes that transition. That's why I use data, information from the El Corte Inglés website, 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 begin a program of artistic interventions that has the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, 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 in both cities became true works of contemporary art, thus approaching the general public. In 1963 Manrique participated, Thousands, Rueda, Sempere and Serrano and in 1965 Guinovart, Hernandez Pijuan, Rafols Casamada, You will go up, Tharrats and Todó. Both samples were reissued in 2005 y 2014, respectively.