Spain’s flag keeps its familiar bands and coat of arms while its colors drift through unfamiliar combinations. The fixed design and changing hues place a national symbol in a continuous state of transformation.
Provenance
Commissioned by Chemsex Benelux and released in 2022.
Indiscreet Units was commissioned by Chemsex Benelux in 2022. The series applies hue rotation to a collection of national and territorial flags, with tokens on Ethereum and image files stored on IPFS. Spain is token #72. The animation is contained in the SVG image itself, so a separate video file is not needed to run the work.
The work asks how much a symbol depends on its prescribed colors. In its discussion of another flag from the series, KADIST connects the shifting hues with Josef Albers’s studies of color perception and with the apparent certainty of national borders. Here a small technical operation makes a familiar emblem seem provisional, while preserving its recognizable outline and internal divisions.