Formalist Obfuscations - An Artist's Statement

“Because heavenly fire no longer reigns down on corrupted cities, it is the camera lens that, like a laser, comes to pierce lived reality in order to put it to death.” - Jean Baudrillard
One could say that the exponentially increasing rate of technological advance is perhaps the largest driving force behind the continued evolution of contemporary society. Not only do we rely on modern technology to facilitate communication, but the speed at which that technology develops directly affects the way humans must adapt to successfully manage and process the flood of information presented to us on an almost never ending basis. In the same way that Baudrillard's lens put reality to death, technology has now become the primary defining aspect of our collective, cultural perception of reality. Culture has lost its capacity to operate on biological intelligence alone, and the integration of technology has progressed to the point where it is physically and cognitively redefining the way we see the world. The emergence of this New Aesthetic is the manifestation of that transition. We've seen this digital look before, in cubism and surrealism, pointillism and mosaics, etc., but it has taken the advent of technology for it to be a culturally recognized aesthetic, integrated into our individual identities. Digital is spilling back out into reality. You can see it everywhere. Behind the scenes in an image file are lines and lines of code. This code constructs the image, alter it even slightly and you risk corrupting the image or destroying it completely. The images here have been through this very process, the output of which produces an image that hangs in the balance between our old conception of the mind and its interpretation of reality, and our new technologically driven aesthetic. These specific works, destined for Pictorico OHP, will serve as interference between the viewer and a series of black and white portraits. The viewer must detach themselves from the spectacle of these aesthetic interruptions and look through them to reveal the identity of each subject. The images have been "glitched" sufficiently so that the original content is obscured to the point of ambiguity.

My primary goal in creating works of art is to explore my own place in the universe and create representations of the cognitive and technological processes that help us construct and interpret our aesthetic experience, and subsequently contribute to our notion of reality. Our individual perceptions of those realities, including those of how we view ourselves within this structure of existence, are also of concern. A major underlying theme in my work is an attempt to convey the notion that our aesthetic perceptions and experiences play a large role in determining how we define ourselves as individuals, but that those perceptions are often subject to interference and manipulation from both external and internal forces. This is often accomplished by the aesthetic representation of the cognitive processes which allow for the creation of mental images from sensory input.

Traditionally, major thought movements have centered around the idea that ultimate knowledge is an attainable goal and that one should work towards that goal through intellectual discourse and investigation, using empirical evidence and reason to formulate conclusions that point to this ultimate knowledge, truth, etc. Modern schools of thought subscribed to the idea of an objective reality, one which is thought to hold intrinsic meaning within itself that is accessible to humankind. Postmodern deconstructionists discard this notion of objective reality and ultimate truth, and in its place propose a system (one that must be broken down, or deconstructed) that only allows for limited function within a strict set of self-imposed guidelines and relationships. They would argue that subjective perception interprets these relationships as ultimate truth and the foundation of the nature of our identity is based on this constructed reality, which finds meaning not intrinsic to objects in the world, but only in relation to other objects in the same world, and how we perceive them. Often times a balance between two schools of thought is ignored for the extreme points of view, and it is my intention to present my work in a way that facilitates a better understanding of the nature of balance and moderation between philosophical and aesthetic ideals of truth and objectivity under technological influence.