Document:Q11210

I have been producing digital artworks in Macromedia Director for more than seven years. In that time I have explored a wide range of conceptual issues. My rationale for these investigations has been firmly fixed on examining aspects of ‘the digital’ as a discrete domain. However, my most recent work Nebula has forced me to think again. The works themselves are the outcome of the implementation of comparatively simple AI as applied to individual pixels. Simple parameters operating in a supportive architecture create amazing complexity, gas clouds of remarkable depth and beauty.
It is important to state that I do not see my work as emulating real nebulae. One has only to look upon a picture of the Crab Nebula to see that the real thing has a wonder of its own. My interest here is in the way that my renditions inter-relate conceptually with the real thing given that the former are based on such simple parameters. Both phenomena present themselves to us as 2-dimensional yet both have great depth. Time is a particular component of that depth. Some of my versions of Nebula can take well over eight hours to form. I have couched Nebula as a critique of the ‘skip intro’, ‘all content now’ imperative of ‘the digital’. In Nebula I am encouraging an attitude of dwelling with a digital artwork through some form of ‘astronomical time’.