Self Portrait Series

The Self Portrait Series continues my exploration of human technology relations by highlighting the increasingly hidden interface between analog and digital systems. In this series I bring together the language of vector-based graphics with a painting process of masking and layering. Each work in this series derives from a portrait of myself made up of distinct vector paths. These individual paths are extracted from the portrait and saved as independent files functioning as a data set that consists of 2,580 unique abstract shapes. Using these shapes, new compositions are then constructed with the intent of emphasizing characteristics of vector graphic imagery such as discreteness, mutability, repetition, and scalability.

With these works I hope to illustrate the non-neutral and interpretive nature of digitization — the conversion of analog information into numerical values. And, to make explicit how digitization’s Cartesian underpinnings, which elevate properties like discreteness and mutability, have become sedimented in experience both socially and psychologically.

Associated Files:

Self Portrait Data Set (pdf 5.7 MB)

Self Portrait (pdf 2.8 MB)