This is a tribute to
Roman Opałka's 1965/1–∞. In 1965 he began counting to infinity, keeping track in white numbers on a sheet of black canvas, saying the numbers out loud as he painted, and taking a photo of himself in front of each completed canvas. Then he'd start the next canvas, adding one percent more white to the black background. He died on August 6, 2011. The final number he painted was 5607249. He had been painting white numbers onto white canvas since 2008.
I admire the dedication to a singular ongoing project, especially when viewed from the side, rendering the breadth of time it has encompassed visible all at once. An initial impression of Burkhard Walther's and Przemek Zajfert's
Camera Obscura 2005/1-∞ demonstrates this well because it is easier to visualize the project due to its availablility online. I have never seen one of
1965/1–∞'s Details, only grainy jpegs.
Camera Obscura 2005/1-∞ is much easier to explore.
I admire also the way
1965/1–∞ conveys a sense of time. In
Camera Obscura 2005/1-∞ this is easier to see, because time is demarcated by the week or the photograph rather than the number or the canvas. Some weeks the camera seems to not return for development or perhaps the photograph doesn't get digitized, but its spot still appears in the list. Sometimes it seems that a camera isn't sent and that week receives a blank entry.
Opałka's process must have been similar. He ran out of paint, he bought new canvas, he had lunch, he slept, visited family, lost interest for a few weeks, he must have- then ticked the tape recorder back to life and brushed in a run of little white numbers again.
I am having a very good time typing longer and longer numbers into Notepad.