DOLLARSTORE OUROBOROS
The Dollarstore Ouroboros is a 36 foot long loop that rotates once every 34 minutes. The accompanying braces are built with objects from the artists childhood home. Each stroke on the canvas guides the frequency of an electronic synthesizer, as the canvas passes under the lamp a melody is played. With each rotation the method of interpretation is changed effectively making the composition infinite. This installation is the first in a series of loops which will co-habitate in larger feedback ecosystems.
I’ve worked on conveyor belt paintings for quite some time, the themes of rumination, trauma, and memory have been ever present in my investigations. This piece is meant to be juxtaposed with Doom Scrolling, with the intention of taking the familial, intimate setting of ones bedroom and unspooling the looped ruminations that often accompany emotionally avoidant technological consumption while under the sheets.
The ouroboros strives to be a reductionist model of ruminitive thinking. Future installations will model more complex thoughts through the interplay between multiple loops, creating ecosystems of evolving motion, sound and informations. The most essential mechanism of this piece is the fact that each brush stroke holds a weight of information which can be interpretted in a number of ways. When I scroll on my phone I too am an interprative system of visual information, often I am trained to reinforce the biases of consumption, classifying rather than listening. The world becomes measured and small, as opposed to infinite and mystical. This motif of becoming the classifier is explored more deeply in the Blue Series and Cloud Watching.
The Dollarstore Ouroboros - a cheap version of something infinte, a self consumptive loop built in to a quick cash operation.
Below are some of my earliest conceptions of the piece:
Designing the software was actually the first thing that I did. I wanted to ensure I knew exactly how the computer would be intepretting the information before I began painting in order to make that process akin to writing a composition. I settled on using a Y axiz to help guide the frequency and the color of the brush stroke to determine the timbre of the note. The piece changes from harmonic modes where it has a finite scale, to a disharmonic mode where the scale is open, at the end of each of these cycles the root note which the scale is derived from changes. The more information that is passed to the intepretter the faster the scale changes. For a full look at the code please check the repository here.
Below are a few examples of different systems I experimented with:
The sculptural form of the Ouroboros is tethered to its environment. Waking up at 4am, sullen irretible and discontent, I grab my phone. The loop lies down with me, pulled taught from behind my eyes to someplace out beyond the darkness, it bubbles and gurgles as I work my way down from my anxiety. The pieces are all taken from my home. They are my home, this process is my home, this loop is my own. In brining the personal elements of this process to the surface I strive to deprivitize my own stress. To bring suicidality, and mental health to the public sphere, to reduce shame and transform this process into something ambient and feasible.
Attached Below is a recording of the thesis presentation of this series given at NYU ITP.