My art has always been influenced by technology, but I find it thrilling to ask questions about it in a messy medium like paint. The imperfections, mistakes and uniqueness restore some humanity to something that can be bleak and impersonal at its most basic level.
Recently I have been working on loose visualizations of the way digital data might look as it resides on a physical medium. The process and physicality of the paintings mimic the reality of the digital-analog interface: bits of information mechanically written on a surface that appears to be smooth but in fact has subtle flaws. The images -- i.e. the data -- are imperfectly recorded and yet still decipherable because of a rigid inherent structure.
Technology's ability to dazzle us has relentlessly improved, and yet fundamentally it operates in very polarized terms: high voltage or low voltage, 1 or 0, on or off. What happens to a society whose communication and cultural memory increasingly rely on a medium that is binary in nature? The smudges and wrinkles of paint on paper are a reminder that imperfection and imprecision are a necessary bulwark against the seductive impulse to define everything in black and white.
May 2010
