is an end without an end an end?

the light of the interface and the light of Truth. an unstable subject is voyaging home when a transformation alters the course of passage. this project combines deteriorating 16mm black and white and glitched digital color projection with plastic sculptural work.

this is a digital video work that combines audio from douglas engelbart’s 1968 debut demo of hypertext, dynamic file listing, and the computerized mouse interface with materials from nicholas de cusa’s de visione dei [on the vision of god] (1453). The title of the work is adapted from a line in cusa’s text: “my God, you are absolute infinity itself, which i perceive to be the infinite end, but i am unable to grasp how an end without an end is an end.” this video work is an exploration of a particular section from cusa’s treatise and considers how the light of film and digital cinema extends certain neo-platonic ways of thought:

"but i see the invisible truth of your face… in all faces the face of faces is seen veiled and in enigma. it is not seen unveiled so long as one does not enter into a certain secret and hidden silence beyond all faces where there is no knowledge or concept of a face. this cloud, mist, darkness, or ignorance into which whoever seeks your face enters when one leaps beyond every knowledge and concept is such that below it your face cannot be found except veiled. but this very cloud reveals your face to be there beyond all veils, just as when our eye seeks to view the light of the sun, which is the sun’s face, it first sees it veiled in the stars and in the colors and in all things which participate its light. but when the eye strives to gaze at the light unveiled, it looks beyond all visible light, because all such light is less than what it seeks. but since the eye seeks to see the light which it cannot see, it knows that so long as it sees anything, what it sees is not what it is seeking. therefore, it must leap beyond every visible light."