His project unendlich, fast ,...(endlessly, almost) does full justice to both perspectives. Indeed, Friese manages the great feat of concentrating, quite poetically and on just one page, a certain number of contingencies inherent in the way things appear on a computer screen connected to the Internet. That great blue surface, too great to be taken in all at once, with a few typographical signs in a little corner which might remind someone of stars, must come from somewhere: but is it from the computer, the viewer, the server, or the infinity of the networks? In any case this image, so simple in appearance, must necessarily be (inter)activated by the viewer, who, if he or she wishes to view the whole, must scroll the image from side to side using cursors. It is with this gesture that awareness begins.

First of all, the computer screen is really a rectangular surface, almost flat and delimited by its physical edges. Friese’s image is devised to extend beyond the usual limits, so it necessarily spills beyond this frame. Next, this same screen displays the results of the operations executed by the machine, to which the user generally has little access. If the computer is connected to the World Wide Web, it can just as easily display things in internal mode as in external. It is difficult to determine where an image or a piece of data comes from. In this particular case, Friese’s page is the result of local interpretation (by the viewer’s computer) of data originating elsewhere (the server). That intense blue is almost as infinite in size as it is in situation. The surroundings in which it appears may give the impression that it originates not in some cinematographic off-screen, but in some great information-system beyond. But to evoke the beyond is not mystical. Rather, there is a dimension of depth to provenance: beyond the screen, wires, chips, and networks, and other machines, other cables, other wires.

Simon Lamunière

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