In Rethinking...

In rethinking my image, I've been thinking about how Dr. Ulmer characterized modernist painting last week. He said it has to do with kinds of fundamental motions. I'll take a stab at expanding that and say that it depends on the motion of the world. One of the things I find remarkable about cinema is how it can show us the play of the world on bodies. So, the majesty of Chaplin in The Pawn Shop is seeing a man absolutely master gravity (see, especially, the bit with him on the ladder, a moment emblematic of the cinema itself).

Anyway, what I'm trying to do with the image is to represent the natural world, its destruction via e-waste, and the simultaneous existence of memory in digital interfaces, themselves underlain by what seems like senseless computation.

I've come upon the idea of diffusion.

When I think of E-waste, I think of the burning of these material products and of the diffusion of their being into the air and finally into the lungs of nearby workers and flora/fauna.

When I think of the transition to electracy, I think of a subtle diffusion from one state to another (not a catastrophe but a slow but sure change...I think my generational positioning is rather unique because we got our first computer when I was an adolescent, so I have the memories of a computer-free childhood and kind of grew up into computing, I guess).

When I think of the process of these products being distributed to developing countries, I think of a diffusion of information. We catch mists of this insanity but only briefly feel it on our face, like a soft wind that, as it comes at us with thousands of winds, often feels like a maelstrom.

Oh God, I'm waxing poetic. Time to wrap this one up.

So: Elements: Nature, Waste, Wind, GUI, code. Logic: Diffusion. Means: Dissolves.

Coming soon.