Roger Vilder : l'art in sharing

« Touch algorithm »
«Defense not to touch»
In the sixties in France, G.R.A.V., Visual Arts Research Group, issued the following principles: "Defense not to touch" and "Defense not to participate". For Roger Vilder, who is currently exhibiting at the NMarino gallery in Paris, these injunctions are now at their full value. For this artist who has shared his life between Canada and France, works on art built in conjunction with those on the movement bring him closer to this story written by the proponents of kinetic art. For it is an itinerary of fifty years which ends today with this proposal of "Touch algorithm". Roger Vilder's first digital research dates back to 1971. In 1973 he made computer drawings at the Meteorological Center of Canada. Now, for Roger Vilder, this desire to combine creation in the field of visual arts with computer technology is realized with these black and white or color drawings animated by algorithms, the tables becoming permanently modified by random or repetitive movements. The surface of the screen- painting is then enslaved by the computer to the benefit of a work in constant change.

And it will be perfect if the work makes you forget the painting, "the work of art." Roger Vilder, with his "Touch Algorithms", thus installs this new relationship in artistic creation. The mutation of the work of art does not seem to me to be due, first of all, to technological progress but rather to this new status: the painting on the wall is not a finished, definitive object, it becomes an interactive, modifiable element, subject to the will of its owner, who owns this share of creativity.
The dream of G.R.A.V. to see the birth of a "Defense not to touch" artists G.R.A.V. finds here a new application with the use by Roger Vilder of touch screens that singularly disrupt the status of both the work and that of the artist. From now on, the collector takes his share of creation for each work initiated by the artist.
The spectator of the painting has decision-making power by intervening on the tactile plane: it can then move the image, enlarge a shape, reduce it, modify the geometric ratio of shapes and colors. In these conditions, it is not only the nature of the work that changes by being attributed an additional actor in the act of creation, it is the very status of the artist that is upset.
By putting this decision-making power at the disposal of the spectator, Roger Vilder puts in a situation an unpublished tandem which, in a certain way, desacralizes the role of the creator, the indisputable pre-eminence of the artist. Imagine a painting by Mondrian modified to suit the humor of the collector? What would Mondrian himself think of it? How is the concept of the author defined? With this proposal of "Touch Algorithm", Roger Vilder puts on the work the question of the relation to the art that the artists of G.R.A.V. posed half a century ago. Among its members, Julio Le Parc declared as early as 1961: "Art does not interest us as such. It is for us a way to provide visual sensations, a material highlighting your gifts.
Everyone is gifted, everyone can become a partner. new relationship between the artist and the viewer takes shape today with this art of sharing.

Claude Guibert «Chronicles of the black hat» Le Monde, octobre 2016