#embrace the nature of humanity latching onto fiction and identifying with it and changing it in a cyclical pattern that ever morphs

[daincrediblegg]

really funny when people get so possessive of fictional characters. like what are you going to do call your lawyer? you going to slap a restraining order on anyone who writes an opinion on sleepo bopkin that isn't you? did your fantasy make you feel entitled to an idea of control that no one ever has or ever will possess? try prozac and leave everyone alone

[biometricbits]

Throughout the last two years I’ve made a bunch of paintings about the human body and how technology, mainly computers, have changed the way we see and experience the world. To me, the body is becoming dissected and exploded into a million bits.  In general, we exist in the “real” world where we interact with people through speech, eye contact, and body language, but all of us are also part of another world, where our movements, our desires, and our dreams all are mined by super computers that monetize our very existence. So my task as a painter, is one which involves an age old problem, which is how best to paint a person. Just as the human body is made up of a conglomeration of biological and technical processes, my paintings are both made by my hand as well as more mechanical processes. I have incorporated the use of a plotter, and outfitted it with a paintbrush to remove my hand from the work entirely. Digital processes have also become more important in the creation of my work. I have photographed paintings while they are still in progress and then selected a single color in Photoshop, and created a mask from this color, which is then screenprinted back onto the painting as a glitched image.  In my work, humans are represented as a mash up of these digital components. There’s flesh, and blobbiness which represents the earthly realm, and crisp edges and pixels which represents the digital.  All of these disparate components coalesce to become what we are today.  

In the series of works I’m proposing for my final thesis exhibition I would like to make a series of paintings that track human evolution into the digital realm. These will take place in the past present and future but won’t look at these different eras as if they existed at different times. They will exist more as a cycle, similar to how Giambatista Vico wrote about cyclical history in The New Science.  One point of artistic inspiration that deals with Vico and time is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake which is a jumble of languages, styles and words. The last sentence of the book becomes the first sentence. There are abstract characters and situations however they’re nearly impossible to discern 

(Vico argues in the Scienza Nuova that civilization develops in a recurring cycle (ricorso) of three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the human. Each age exhibits distinct political and social features and can be characterized by master tropes or figures of language. The giganti of the divine age rely on metaphor to compare, and thus comprehend, human and natural phenomena. In the heroic age, metonymy and synecdoche support the development of feudal or monarchic institutions embodied by idealized figures. The final age is characterized by popular democracy and reflection via irony; in this epoch, the rise of rationality leads to barbarie della reflessione or barbarism of reflection, and civilization descends once more into the poetic era. )

In my paintings I often make reference to more vintage looking computers and artifacts that exist in a time which is difficult to place. In fact the people themselves are a cacaphony of avatars and real human flesh. For a period of time I was allowing these paintings to unfold organically. Often accidents and spiils determined compositional structure. The paintings needed to built up over time, and for this reason the preliminary stages were often approached in a very haphazard fashion. In the last few months I made a very simply change, and it has also changed my paintings. I started stealing from older compositions.  If I was going to do a portrait, I started looking at how people made portraits over the years. Where should the head be? Where do the hands go? I feel this has given the paintings some structure that allows the viewer an easy entry point into the work.  I also began to embrace the color palette which resonated with me the most. These earthly red and brown tones that are reminiscent of human organs became more at home in my work as they glide with more fluorescent colors we associate more with the technological or unnatural. 

I make a lot of work, and as you know I’ve got two shows coming up at the end of the year. I’ve already spoken to the gallery and Catherine about the final show, and the quantity of the work I will be making. Basically my approach is to make a ton of work, at my normal pace, and then work the museum through their own curatorial procedures to determine which works should be shown and in what manner. I am open to curatorial suggestions in this regard. Especially considering since there’s a potential for 5 people to be in the exhibition, space could be limited. Nonetheless, in my conversations with the gallery it was said that they will do their best to accommodate my artistic vision. If there’s enough space for this, is still to be decided. 

      So, lets get into what I actually want to make. For this exhibition I’d like to create one large “history” painting.  This will be done on a 12 foot by 6 foot canvas which will be shown in a landscape configuration. The painting will be a multifigural composition. All of the paintings in this series of works are all about the story of electricity. I feel like electricity is the perfect subject to explore since we often associate it with technology. But electricity is also what makes our bodies work and our hearts beat. It’s something already inside us, working all the time, but something we see as being external as well. In this regard it’s also closely linked to ideas concerning artifical life , or as it is more commonly called now, artificial intelligence. Of course through containing electricity we’ve also become able to create computers that can simulate life. Through these attempts we also discovered that the best way to render the digital world is through the use of mathematical equations that create fractals.  This is where it gets weird. The rise of PCs was actually something that developed alongside the use of psychedelic drugs. There was a bit of an East/West coast battle going on. On the East Coast you had IBM, which was representative of the corporate world, and then the more hippy aesthetic of the Bay Area which saw technology as something which could truly be liberating. My paintings see these cyborgs (that’s us) as something which can also be a liberating concept, but something which also has been used to control. 

     The term cyberdelic is something which I identify closely with. However, I’m not interested in seeing the virtual as a form of escapism. Science fiction has consistently been quite good at creating a fantasy world that also addresses contemporary issues.  In addition to making paintings I have also been writing short fiction about characters who exist in this world that I’m creating.  

In addition to the large multifigural compositions depicting events that happen simultaneously in the past present and the future, I also want to make these creatures from these shaped canvases.  I initially got this idea from a puzzle, and thinking about how I could make a work that could take up a whole wall, but be easily packed up.  While making prototypes for this, I discovered that it’s better to make more amorphous shapes which can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways to make different types of creatures. Each component can be used in a variety of ways. For instance, what looks like a head in one configuration, can be turned upside down and used as an elbow in another. By using a french latch on the back I can easily turn these canvases in a variety of ways. When it comes time to hang, I’ll photograph each one and make a configation in photoshop first, and then attempt to make a similar configuration on the wall. I’m really excited about these pieces since they seem to already fit with what I’ve been doing in terms of their shape. I also like using the shadows, and the fluroscent glow behind them that give them an otherworldly feeling. Upon completing this first attempt, I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of my influences, David Cronenberg who often had these types of body tech devices in his films. Also, my paintings often have blobs that are so far abstracted that it’s difficult to make out any type of recognizable form. By being able to shift these abstract shapes around I can create a variety of creatures from one “pack” of paintings. Yet what they represent is still the same. They’re entities that are constantly shifting and moving.  Individuals with autonomy that also can combine and become a network.  

[biometricbits]

Throughout the last two years I’ve made a bunch of paintings about the human body and how technology, mainly computers, have changed the way we see and experience the world. To me, the body is becoming dissected and exploded into a million bits.  In general, we exist in the “real” world where we interact with people through speech, eye contact, and body language, but all of us are also part of another world, where our movements, our desires, and our dreams all are mined by super computers that monetize our very existence. So my task as a painter, is one which involves an age old problem, which is how best to paint a person. Just as the human body is made up of a conglomeration of biological and technical processes, my paintings are both made by my hand as well as more mechanical processes. I have incorporated the use of a plotter, and outfitted it with a paintbrush to remove my hand from the work entirely. Digital processes have also become more important in the creation of my work. I have photographed paintings while they are still in progress and then selected a single color in Photoshop, and created a mask from this color, which is then screenprinted back onto the painting as a glitched image.  In my work, humans are represented as a mash up of these digital components. There’s flesh, and blobbiness which represents the earthly realm, and crisp edges and pixels which represents the digital.  All of these disparate components coalesce to become what we are today.  

In the series of works I’m proposing for my final thesis exhibition I would like to make a series of paintings that track human evolution into the digital realm. These will take place in the past present and future but won’t look at these different eras as if they existed at different times. They will exist more as a cycle, similar to how Giambatista Vico wrote about cyclical history in The New Science.  One point of artistic inspiration that deals with Vico and time is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake which is a jumble of languages, styles and words. The last sentence of the book becomes the first sentence. There are abstract characters and situations however they’re nearly impossible to discern 

(Vico argues in the Scienza Nuova that civilization develops in a recurring cycle (ricorso) of three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the human. Each age exhibits distinct political and social features and can be characterized by master tropes or figures of language. The giganti of the divine age rely on metaphor to compare, and thus comprehend, human and natural phenomena. In the heroic age, metonymy and synecdoche support the development of feudal or monarchic institutions embodied by idealized figures. The final age is characterized by popular democracy and reflection via irony; in this epoch, the rise of rationality leads to barbarie della reflessione or barbarism of reflection, and civilization descends once more into the poetic era. )

In my paintings I often make reference to more vintage looking computers and artifacts that exist in a time which is difficult to place. In fact the people themselves are a cacaphony of avatars and real human flesh. For a period of time I was allowing these paintings to unfold organically. Often accidents and spiils determined compositional structure. The paintings needed to built up over time, and for this reason the preliminary stages were often approached in a very haphazard fashion. In the last few months I made a very simply change, and it has also changed my paintings. I started stealing from older compositions.  If I was going to do a portrait, I started looking at how people made portraits over the years. Where should the head be? Where do the hands go? I feel this has given the paintings some structure that allows the viewer an easy entry point into the work.  I also began to embrace the color palette which resonated with me the most. These earthly red and brown tones that are reminiscent of human organs became more at home in my work as they glide with more fluorescent colors we associate more with the technological or unnatural. 

I make a lot of work, and as you know I’ve got two shows coming up at the end of the year. I’ve already spoken to the gallery and Catherine about the final show, and the quantity of the work I will be making. Basically my approach is to make a ton of work, at my normal pace, and then work the museum through their own curatorial procedures to determine which works should be shown and in what manner. I am open to curatorial suggestions in this regard. Especially considering since there’s a potential for 5 people to be in the exhibition, space could be limited. Nonetheless, in my conversations with the gallery it was said that they will do their best to accommodate my artistic vision. If there’s enough space for this, is still to be decided. 

      So, lets get into what I actually want to make. For this exhibition I’d like to create one large “history” painting.  This will be done on a 12 foot by 6 foot canvas which will be shown in a landscape configuration. The painting will be a multifigural composition. All of the paintings in this series of works are all about the story of electricity. I feel like electricity is the perfect subject to explore since we often associate it with technology. But electricity is also what makes our bodies work and our hearts beat. It’s something already inside us, working all the time, but something we see as being external as well. In this regard it’s also closely linked to ideas concerning artifical life , or as it is more commonly called now, artificial intelligence. Of course through containing electricity we’ve also become able to create computers that can simulate life. Through these attempts we also discovered that the best way to render the digital world is through the use of mathematical equations that create fractals.  This is where it gets weird. The rise of PCs was actually something that developed alongside the use of psychedelic drugs. There was a bit of an East/West coast battle going on. On the East Coast you had IBM, which was representative of the corporate world, and then the more hippy aesthetic of the Bay Area which saw technology as something which could truly be liberating. My paintings see these cyborgs (that’s us) as something which can also be a liberating concept, but something which also has been used to control. 

     The term cyberdelic is something which I identify closely with. However, I’m not interested in seeing the virtual as a form of escapism. Science fiction has consistently been quite good at creating a fantasy world that also addresses contemporary issues.  In addition to making paintings I have also been writing short fiction about characters who exist in this world that I’m creating.  

In addition to the large multifigural compositions depicting events that happen simultaneously in the past present and the future, I also want to make these creatures from these shaped canvases.  I initially got this idea from a puzzle, and thinking about how I could make a work that could take up a whole wall, but be easily packed up.  While making prototypes for this, I discovered that it’s better to make more amorphous shapes which can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways to make different types of creatures. Each component can be used in a variety of ways. For instance, what looks like a head in one configuration, can be turned upside down and used as an elbow in another. By using a french latch on the back I can easily turn these canvases in a variety of ways. When it comes time to hang, I’ll photograph each one and make a configation in photoshop first, and then attempt to make a similar configuration on the wall. I’m really excited about these pieces since they seem to already fit with what I’ve been doing in terms of their shape. I also like using the shadows, and the fluroscent glow behind them that give them an otherworldly feeling. Upon completing this first attempt, I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of my influences, David Cronenberg who often had these types of body tech devices in his films. Also, my paintings often have blobs that are so far abstracted that it’s difficult to make out any type of recognizable form. By being able to shift these abstract shapes around I can create a variety of creatures from one “pack” of paintings. Yet what they represent is still the same. They’re entities that are constantly shifting and moving.  Individuals with autonomy that also can combine and become a network.