Yann Novak is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. One year after The Future Is A Forward Escape Into The Past, he released a new work. Scalar Fields is out now via ROOM40. His words about it: “Scalar Fields is a body of work encompassing audiovisual installation, prints, and sound works initiated in 2013. In these works I used the idea of the scalar field as a simple framework to experiment with time-based works that are not dependent on time when experienced. 

I wanted to explore slowing down video to the point that change was imperceptible and create sound with no attack or decay, only sustain. My intent was to create a time-based piece that could be experienced more as a painting or sculpture could: a static object that gains meaning though prolonged observation. 

I was interested in what would happen when the audience was given agency over their experience. As the series progressed, the concept drifted further and further from the title’s formal association with math or physics––instead the framework developed a life of its own.