In my interdisciplinary research studio practice, I investigate drawing and imaging methods to moderate a conversation between historical technology and contemporary experience. Employing a media-archeological approach, I produce artworks, designed objects, speculative architectures, public lectures, and original scholarship, probing our long history of human-machine collaborations and art-technology relationships.
My inquiries span various territories:
Histories and futures. Digital applications are novel; human-technology relationships are not. How can we understand centuries of art-technology explorations to inform increasingly sophisticated entanglements with computing?
Making and the creative process. Digital media does not supersede analog methods; they coexist in complex, interconnected ways. What is the nature of physical processes in the digital age?
Concepts and Theory. How do we interrogate the nature of seeing and making in a time of immaterial pixels?
My fascination with analog-digital relationships can be summed up by two essential instruments: pencils and screens. I draw; I use computers. Drawing comes from a long history, while computers point to new futures. But I also draw with computers—my hybrid working modes examine media production and media consumption.
Analog/Digital
Born in 1975, I was in my third year of college when Netscape produced the first web browser; this was the birth of the World Wide Web. In the 1990s, emerging software sometimes caused a contentious debate between avant-garde futurists championing new possibilities and seasoned professionals who took a skeptical stance on the latest digital tools. For a long time, analog-digital debates have come down to an oversimplification. Pencil drawings are real, and digital drawings are virtual. This does not need to be a mutually exclusive binary. What does it mean to hybridize physical media with virtual systems?
Selected Projects:
Machine Drawing Drawings Machines
Profilograph (after Dürer)
Profilograph (after Muybridge)
Adventures in Virtuality
Throughout many of my projects, I investigate our historical relationships to virtuality. Although “virtual reality” was coined in the 1980s, virtuality—the systematic approximation and representation of reality—existed long before computers. Obsessions over verisimilitude span centuries. If the digital age introduced us to VR, what would happen if I introduced historical analog virtual systems to the 21st century?
Selected Projects:
Windows
Memento Mori (after Holbein)
Memento Mori (Tattoo)
Memento Mori (Catoptric)
Memento Mori (Selfie Stick)
Selected Writings:
Observations on the Virtual
Screenologies
It’s impossible to discuss contemporary virtual media and digital processes without interrogating the screen. Computers didn’t invent screens, but they are the ubiquitous access point for nearly every image produced today. Digital media—and media culture—is interwoven with screens. They are virtual portals that can transport us to unexpected worlds, direct us to what we seek, and alter how we experience everyday life. From production to presentation, nearly all of my work engages screens. I use computers to draw and manipulate images; I project works and broadcast projects on screens. Some works, however, are screenologies—they directly examine screen experiences.
Selected Projects:
Webcam Venus
brbxoxo
Here, There, Everywhere
High Rise
iPhone Panoramas
Untitled (Dance)
Selected Writings:
Pictus Interruptus and Other Notes on the Selfie
Media Archeology
My drawing and imaging research spans materials and disciplines but is media archeological in nature. Media archeology aims to uncover and circulate repressed or neglected media approaches and technologies to contextualize current dominant media narratives. My work employs this methodology to teach, inform creative concepts, and develop original scholarship. What can we learn about current and emerging art and technology relationships if people today can experience historical examples firsthand?
Selected Projects:
NeoLucida
NeoLucida XL
Paris Street; Rainy Day
Selected Writings:
A Brief History of Drawing Machines
A DIY Camera Lucida
The Stereoautograph
What is Drawing?
I retreated inward during COVID-19 quarantine. For the first time in a long time, I picked up a pencil and just drew. I temporarily rejected sophisticated drawing technology applications and returned to my youthful desire to draw observationally. This period of simplification brought me closer to the fundamentals of materials I had taken for granted. What is graphite? What is ink? How does it feel to drag a stylus across a surface and leave a mark?
Selected Projects:
In Isolation: Pencil
In Isolation: Salt
In Isolation: Water
In Isolation: Ink
Grind
Sun Pictures
The Lifting
Between Poses
Ubi Sunt
Lacrimae Rerum
My preoccupation with the spectrum of material-immaterial practices and analog-digital hybridity arises from our contemporary moment. Technology’s march won’t abate; its influence on media production and creative practice will continue to advance rapidly. Hand-wringing over AI has recently dominated art-technology conversations, but humans and machines have collaborated for centuries. Our current world, obsessed with rapid obsolescence, requires art and research to conserve collaborative histories. I serve two co-equal roles across art, design, and scholarly research. I am a steward of historical knowledge, mining forgotten stories of art and technology relationships. I use this research to be a creative agitator, speculating on our fast-approaching future, working alongside—and in alliance with—new technologies.