I
like to paint! Instead
of canvas, brush and pigments, I sometimes use a laptop computer,
a tablet and a large format ink jet printer. Painting with
computer is related to painting with brush and pigments in
that they are both methods of manipulating light - I lay down
color and define forms by moving my hand, while looking at
a subject. The difference is that traditional painting techniques
result in a physical object, (a canvas covered with pigments
for example), while painting with a computer yields a chunk
of raw digital information.
Digital information is ethereal, it can be transmitted at the speed of light
via fiber optic cable, broadcast into the cosmos with radio telescopes, assimilated
into vast electronic libraries, copied with absolute fidelity or translated
into physical space by a printer. Computer paintings do not have a unique 'original'
- like a pigment covered canvas or a photographic negative. This is because
digital information can be duplicated perfectly, and a single computer painting
could potentially spawn an infinite number of originals.
My paintings are distributed globally through the world wide web, and live
on thousands of personal computers and network servers. My work is constantly
being copied, transmitted, transformed, materialized and annihilated. With
all those countless manifestations winking on and off all over the earth, only
five have been actually signed by me, the artist. These five singed paintings
form a sequence.
If
you buy into Dawkins and grant that information is alive, then
the following paradox arises - although death is our destiny,
we sweat divinity. The signpost up ahead, the
ultimately uncollectable art. Proceed
with caution. |