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WobbleWave

Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/permanent-collection?collection=0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0&token=8917&page=2

Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/wobblewave-8917

Date Minted: March 20, 2020

Artist Description: We're all feeling our waves getting a bit wobbly this year. Original digital animation manipulated with Analog Glitch Device, recorded on VHS then digitally transferred in 1080p HD.Single Edition .mp4 Token by Sarah Zucker – in pristine quality, first solo .mp4 Token.

CohentheWriter’s Commentary:

What is entirely beyond question is that Sarah Zucker (@theSarahshow) has an absolutely unmistakable visual style. Her oeuvre is filled with pieces that seem to have been ripped from some surrealist 1980’s television program, many of them having been messed with through an Analog Glitch Device, like this one, WobbleWave. But focusing on only this glitchy, distorting visual aspect is to miss the exuberance that bursts through Zucker’s work. There is so much movement, such an exploration of the entire rainbow, that one can’t help but feel the infectious joy inherent in Zucker’s pieces. They are visual journeys, hallucinatory episodes, and all products of the artist’s inimitable style. Just look for a moment at WobbleWaves (or for a few moments), and allow yourself to wash over in visual associations. I am brought to so many different places by Zucker’s pieces. I am brought to places I’ve never been, which I’ve only glimpsed before, or heard of, or seen allusions to. Through Zucker’s pieces, through their extraordinary composition and their fully-realized style, we are expertly brought through history and through ourselves. All that with just a few colors, some waves, and some movement. In inept hands, forgettable. In Zucker’s, masterful.

I stare deeply into WobbleWave and I’m brought back to my own childhood, to the small TV I was allowed to keep in my room, the one that had just barely avoided a need for bunny ears, and all the problems of static and signal it dealt with. And because I’m brought to that time, I feel its wholeness: I think of the Pokemon I used to watch, the popcorn my mom used to make me, the fleece pajama bottoms I’d wear on Saturday mornings. Do you feel that nostalgia too? Nostalgia is a chain, and each piece of it connects to another, and another, and another, and by lengthening on and on and on, the whole thing gets stronger, can do more, can pull more weight. What else do I see? I see tests of our emergency response system. I see my 3rd-grade gym teacher wheeling a blocky old AV cart television in front of the class to show us an ancient PSA on sexual health. That is the utmost genius in Zucker’s work: She calls up things that aren’t there, that have no physical representation in her art.

Which makes us, the observers, co-conspirators, co-artists, in a way. We have no choice but to interact with these pieces and give them aspects of ourselves, bits of our history, which the pieces then elongate and allow us to look at. They’re hypnotic in that way. WobbleWave is hypnotic in form too. The piece is a series of rapid waves crashing onto the shore, except the waves and shore are all electrical, the waves all rising rainbows of color, the whole sequence of wave-forms duplicated four times and following a radio-wave pattern. It’s like the entire spectrum of visible light has come to life and splayed itself, cat-like, along the length of the piece. Zucker’s trademark analog filter corrupts the whole thing visually, gives it that aged appearance. The ripples, the rising, the colors continue on in perpetuity. This is not one of those looping pieces that finish and turn to black before starting again; this continues on, unabated, endlessly. We get lost in it, mesmerized in its repetition and its ensuing effect.

For that reason, it’s all the easier to get mentally lost in, to project ourselves upon. This is a piece devoid of specific figures, any real grounding aspects. Even the colors change too quickly for us to take mental stock of what we’re seeing at any one time. We dart our eyes around the piece, but its movement outpaces ours. And maybe that’s why it’s such a fertile ground for our nostalgia, our own memories and associations. A lesser artist might have imposed certain items of note onto this piece. A lesser artist might have centralized their piece around an overt theme, something with which we can hang onto as our thoughts, associations, and experiences map themselves out upon it. Zucker prefers something more nebulous, doesn’t seem to have an interest in limiting herself, or us, to the realm of the singular and specific. 

This is abstraction, and abstract art always has an edge over other art styles in its ability to be experienced without qualification. It’s really difficult to put any overt qualification on a piece as abstract as this, that is really nothing more than color and composition. So much in abstraction comes down to intent and the artist’s ability to express that intent in a way that it can be understood felt by an observer. We have to give immense credit to Zucker for being so subtle in how she so cleverly communicates that intent. Look at what just a few colors, what a bit of movement, what a clever filter can do. Together, in Zucker’s hand, these things can transport us totally. And I propose that this piece probably is even more transportative the older you are, the more respective experience you have with the style this imitates. My parents do not regularly look at Crypto Art, but they were children growing up in the 80’s, and I’d bet that upon seeing this piece, they would fall back into that time, to their own high school days, the things then on TV, their significant others at the time, memories of pranks and failed tests and juvenile frivolity. 

That doesn’t just happen. Even great artists can’t always conjure such a thing. And yet Zucker does. Zucker does, and she showcases her talent in the way only the most brilliant artists and composers can: by making it look easy, by making us think we ourselves could do it. Only we can’t. Only nobody can. Except Zucker. Because if they could, if we could, if anyone could, they would’ve. But they haven’t. Neither have we. Only Zucker has. 

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