The End – Nikos Alexiou

• By Joakim Piniros

“The End” by visual artist Nikos Alexiou

is being projected across the façade (61m long) of the National Bank of Greece on Kotzia Square, Athens, every evening 8:30-11:30 from 23/09/2016 until 3/10/2016, to celebrate 175 years from the foundation of the Bank.
Several years ago we had the honor and pleasure to work with the artist on this video which represented Greece in the artistic Venice Biennale of 2007.

Nikos conceived the idea of a digital visualization of the floor of the “Holly Monastery Iviron” ascribing kinetic and color-variance properties to the floor’s sophisticated ornamentation. Having specified the time-transitions of the basic ornamentation elements, he commissioned us to produce the video. Having seen the first outcome of our work, he then asked us to further analyze and diversify the transitions, with respect to more detailed ornamentation elements. The original video was then updated, according to the new requirements. The ensuing creative exchange between us and the artist, resulted in a choreography of coordinated transpositions, rotations and color-transitions of hundreds of tiny elements, according to an extensive time-series table, which Nikos gradually composed, each time based on the completed phase of the digital visualization, at his disposal. The vast multitude of different period time series makes it practically impossible to estimate the period of the overall transition scenario, if such a period actually exists. Consequently, the project -viewed as nonperiodic- can be also considered as a comment on non enumerable infinity, which elegantly questions the project’s title: Is this “The End”?