LED video panel, processor (video to data), dvd, dvd player.
dimensions: 128 x 96 x 20 cm
Collection: Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto

Newtron consists of a single modular unit from a large outdoor LED video display, like those normally seen in big sport and entertainment venues. It shows only the corresponding fragment of the image that would be displaying on the whole screen.

Video screens work on the principle of “optical mixture”, a perception phenomenon based on the fact that our eyes sum adjacent colour dots to “produce” the impression of a new colour, resulting from the mix. This phenomenon is behind the process of four-colour printing and, beforehand, was the principle that originated impressionist and pointillist techniques. In video, this effect is achieved by grouping miniscule dots of red, green and blue light. “Optical mixture” is dependent on scale and proximity. Or, should we say, resolution. From a close distance one can see the discrete colour points, but looking from further away these points merge in our perception, becoming new colours.
Newtron’s video panel has a relatively low resolution in a sort of reversed trend, regarding technology’s accelerating progress towards high-resolution image display. This way it emphasizes the physicality of the LED pixels as individual light sources, dismantling the “optical mixture”, and revealing the fact that they’re just modulating red, green and blue light.