Progressive Movement Towards Concrete Creation

Progressive Movement Towards Concrete Creation presents a series of computer-generated visual works operating in real time. The imagery is derived from El Lissittky’s avant-garde abstract works, and visualizes the stock market performance of several companies in the Internet sector.

Visit work online

Update: This artwork is currently not working. It uses a Google finance API service to get the live market readings necessary for the website. The service was shut off on September 2017.

Individual company visulizations:

Alphabet Inc. (Google) Yahoo! Inc. Facebook Inc. Twitter Inc. LinkedIn Corp.

The imagery in each work is composed of the arrangement of five distinct elementary shapes, some of them included twice:

  • 2 x Group of rectangles
  • 1 x Hexagon
  • 1 x Grid
  • 2 x Circle
  • 1 x Arc

The geometrical elements, as well as the general aesthetic of the work, are derived from Russian avant-gardist El Lissitzky’s Proun series. "Progressive Movement Towards Concrete Creation” is a direct citation form his manifesto on the new kind of abstraction.

The Proun series, initiated in 1919 and consisting of paintings, drawings and lithographs was Lissitzky's vanguard exploration of spatial elements. For him, Proun abstraction was the artistic equivalent to current technological development. It expressed the zeal for utopic progress shared by most European avant-gardes.

The composition and animation of these elements is directly based on the real-time stock market performance of several leading companies in the Internet sector, particularly in the areas of social media and search engine services.

For the exhibition Fuzzy Logic , held at V2_ Institute for Unstable Media (Rotterdam, NL) during May 2016, the installation includes visualizations from the financial data of Alphabet Inc. (Google), Yahoo! Inc., Facebook Inc., and Twitter Inc.

Stock market data used for the work includes:

  • Current Price
  • Opening price for the last or current trading day
  • Highest price on the last or current trading day
  • Lowest price on the last or current trading day
  • Previous day close price
  • Price change (current price in relation to previous close price)
  • Price change as percentage
  • Highest price on the last 52 weeks
  • Lowest price on the last 52 weeks
  • Shares outstanding (the company's stock currently held by all its shareholders)
  • Market capitalization (total value of all the company's shares of stock)
  • Institutional ownership (percentage of shares outstanding held by institutional investors)
  • EPS: Earnings per share
  • P/E: Price to earnings ratio (current share price relative to per-share earnings)
  • Beta (index of volatility or risk in comparison to the market as a whole)