The Heat and The Moment
Heat and Moment #1
Ink on Paper
12” x 12”
Heat and Moment #2
Ink on Paper
12” x 12”
Heat and Moment #3
Ink on Paper
12” x 12”
Heat and Moment #4
Ink on Paper
12” x 12”
Heat and Moment #5
Ink on Paper
12” x 12”
Lime Scooter Project #2
The publicly available electric scooter seemingly overnight became a ubiquitous symbol of both the silicon valley and our contemporary culture. It has encapsulated the rapidly growing Gig economy as well as an individual desire for immediacy and extended personal freedom. Working in tandem with a smartphone, people now glide effortlessly through streets and sidewalks, returning their ride to a fleet of identical lime green scooters when they are done. Nearly completely sentencing conventional modes of transportation to quaint obsolescence.
A growing class of smart and ambitious young people are starting to secure their positions in the contemporary structure of production. Home ownership moves further out of the picture for many people and in urban centers cars become a cumbersome hassle. The coming generation has reckoned with these facts and in many cases taken them head on, “van lifers” and ‘global nomads” dominate the cultural landscape, a lack of roots and responsibility gives one the liberty to travel. In our world what it means to be liberated or to be self actualized is changing.
Works Made in Collaboration With Google’s Computer Vision Software
As the expanding web of information technology penetrates deeper into our lives, we can find it difficult to find distinction between the two. These technologies, intended for communication, have come to fulfill a number of purposes and in that have become particularly personalized and intensely commodified. The advent of machine learning means that computers have become better and better at observing behavior to make judgments and evaluations. By observing these patterns they decide who will be most susceptible to particular types of information. Since they already know what you are interested in, by the information they glean from you, the information they return is strikingly similar to what you are interested in. To an unfocused eye it would appear the automated information technology reflects your identity back to you. I postulate though that it is a warped perception, because the information is not fed back passively, the processes that return information do so with a bias, you are seeing yourself cataloged. By digesting this as a reflection of oneself it begins to affect our self perception and then in response our expression of self, shifting it toward that biased position, even ever so slightly. By repeating this process recursively our perception starts to become radically shifted, a hyperbolised version of ourselves, pushed to the outer limits of who we once were.
In this work I wished to show the way that one can allow themself to be taken over, piloted by a complex algorithm. I employed the materials of one of the largest information technology companies, google, to observe my life and surroundings. Much like an artist would watch his subject before painting them, the software took in the environment and used its experience to decide on a composition that was most eye-catching and expressive of the content. It was then my portion of the collaboration the required my hand as an artist to merge the machine’s understanding of the information with my own, as well as my understanding of the machine’s understanding. The result is work that is aimless while confrontational, ideology is galvanized under the pressure of the printing process then melted away with the stroke of a brush. Color isolates itself in each illuminated pixel, distinguished from its neighbor by a barrier of pitch black. One is drawn in to see the distinct swathes but can’t help but step back to try and see the whole picture. And we can't help but feel the cold creep of technology all around us.
Two Girls Ponder a New Spring
Ink and Oil on paper
65”x 36”
Painting Knee Deep In It
Ink and Oil on Paper
36” x 65”
Waves Crash over Rocks
Ink and Oil on Paper
36” x 65”
In-organic Compositions
Before we apply texture, introduce color, or start to develop light and form we consider composition. It begins on a subliminal level, composition is how we organize our lives how we infer and express. How the natural world composes itself in many ways effects the way we come to understand the composition of life. What then do we learn if we take the elements of composition away from ourselves. What do we learn if we take composition away from life completely. The on-going series In-Organic Compositions I explore the ways i can liberate myself from the burden of composition to see what I learn about the world, myself, and my practice.
In-Organic Composition
Ink on Paper
9” x 12”
In-Organic Composition
Ink on Paper
9” x 12”