data capture_In search of LANDSCAPE PAINTING
data capture_In search of LANDSCAPE PAINTING

acrylic on polycotton
1540 x 1950 mm (framed)


data capture_In search of LANDSCAPE PAINTING are part of a series of paintings derived from fast stop-frame animations generated from images sourced from Internet Google Image Searches. In this case the starting point for the image search are the words ‘landscape painting’. The intention is to start with a broad genre of painting and use the Internet databank to generate the visual material. The closest image match is downloaded from the Google Image Search and then re-uploaded as the next search input and so on. Screen grabs are taken of the Google Image Search interface and animated and used as source for data capture_In search of LANDSCAPE PAINTING (24 images animated at 24fps). The history of landscape painting is mediated through the coded search function and becomes a random composite sample of visual information. The databank becomes the contemporary ‘landscape’ I am looking at rather than the content. The use of animating multiple images also adds the challenge of attempting to capture the fleeting and the overwhelming volume of information, while also becomes a meditation of perception. How we receive, perceive and process information in the present moment.

This painting reflects my interest in the intersection of changing digital technologies of representation and the relationship of information systems and its impact on how we orientate ourselves in our cultural and natural environment. The way we engage with information mediated by technology impacts our relationship to time and space. Sampling as a creative process is informed by the volume of audiovisual material on the Internet that we have access to and the way that we navigate that information through search engines. Search engines such as Google work with word associations and colour as hyperlinks that form a web-like structure rather than categorization as a fixed linear system. This search software technology supports a sampling rather than an in depth research associated with analogue systems of investigation which rely on tracing a set of knowledge to a primary source. Information is verified by the sheer collective number and repetition as we sample image, text, video or sound from an ever-changing collective databank of coded material that only manifests as the visual as we call it up on a screen interface in the moment. The Google image search works on linking information on the basis of matching the numerical sequencing of the coded information that makes up the pixelated digital image. This opens up the associative field where the digital environment comes closer to the neural functioning of how our brain samples information through our senses.

data capture_In search of LANDSCAPE PAINTING
data capture_In search of LANDSCAPE PAINTING

work in progress
Atlantic House
Maitland
Cape Town