(they/them)
An artist engaging with virtuality, ecology, sexuality, perception, labor, memory, and time
CV
Zach’s Crab Shack
Philadelphia, PA
JUN 17-AUG 6 2023
Over the course of billions of years the Earth has evolved from an oceanic orb to a seeing machine that reproduces visions of itself. Vision may be understood as an outcome of incalculable mistakes, chance encounters, and erotic acts throughout this timeline.
Existence as a seeing machine is a technical mode of the planet. An erotic mode.
Further, the idea that intelligence is only now utilizing artifice dismisses the activity of Attacus atlas, the Atlas moth, whose wings mimic cobra heads. A seeing without eyes.
Inquiries here begin with 3D scans of car headlights found on the Spring Garden Bridge, an area of frequent accidents. When scanned, these objects become skin-, husk-, shell-object. What appears as a glitch in scanning is simply a revealing of the computational technology of the scanner, an if-then seeing machine that translates lightwaves to data.
The scanner is moved around an object by a human operator. The moment of capture is thus a gesture, a photograph more similar to a video, and yet of course wholly unlike either.
Other objects present were once discarded into an ocean dumping site in South Brooklyn after fulfilling their use-value. Dissolved by salt water, they became abstracted industrial organs disconnected from their corpus. Some are painted grey to match the default color of objects in Rhino, the modeling software used to manipulate 3D scans. Objects coming into render. Others are painted chromakey green. Objects as sites of projection.
The car door and the exhaust manifolds are from Kensington, Philadelphia, a neighborhood of our city many pretend not to see. A region filled with body shops. The door and the Atlas moth collide. How did we get here?
How to reveal that which is believed to be glitch as integral, systemic, code-level. Material.
How to hold something broken as it reflects its circumstance. Comes into seeing.
An eye is an image that seeks itself. So what of the heart?