Movement as simulacrum in the virtual world: Michael Betancourt and the art of immediacy

Abstract

In recent times, artistic creation has come closer to the media image proposed by Internet, thus seriously altering an aesthetic experience based before on movement of the viewer around the work and now defined by screens that induce passivity. Michael Betancourt’s video work, part of the so-called glitch art, which focuses on the failure that can occur within the digital realm, has been here the basis for a comparative study between different concepts of movement in art, as well as between a current and a past art, a comparison that allows us to see clearly how technological advances have produced radical changes in the physical, spatial and mobile nature of the artwork. Betancourt’s investigation proposes a new kinetic art that becomes critical through error, mimics the real-time movement that contemporary culture demands, and uncovers the artificiality of images that mimic reality as if they wanted to replace it.