The New Machinery

The New Machinery is a form of photographic science fiction. The work references the barely visible mechanisms that surround our everyday life — as a camouflaged presence or a digital phantom. Through this work I conjure a seductive and sinister physicality to the networks that charm their way into our lives while surveilling our movements and collecting our data. As we look at them they are most certainly looking at us. These images are pieced together from material and light studies that I perform on scavenged tools, toys, materials and appliances. The camera crunches the disassembled parts into gestures of light and structure. This generative process breaks apart the complicated act of seeing into small units — building blocks with which I construct large scale physical compositions. These machines have quietly evolved from discarded hardware and in the same way, the image arises slowly as parts find each other and form relationships — an additive, analog process that creates logic and narrative from the inside out. As a final crucial step, I use the physical construction as a map to rebuild the image digitally, crossing media once again to retranslate the image into a flattened, stylized product. I've labeled these mysterious contraptions The New Machinery as a nod towards the recycled materials and the machine-like logic in their creation and perception. Cobbled together from discarded utilitarian parts, their presence invites inspection while their function remains inscrutable.