Are you able to share a bit about your artistic path? What are a number of vital moments in your journey as an artist which have led to the work you’re creating now?
I accomplished my Bachelor of Tremendous Arts on the College of Alberta in 2013. I studied portray, drawing and sculpture. I used to be expert in realism and portraiture and was doing determine work of my buddies watching television and utilizing smartphones and doing medication and simply being typically checked out, with the display as a form of pervading presence all through. I used to be going to high school in the course of the rise of digicam telephones and smartphones and social media, so throughout my research I used to be utilizing my Blackberry Pearl 9100 to take photos and file movies wherever I may, recording fascinating visible phenomena or pure processes taking place in nature, what I favored to name on the time “moments of the universe” comparable to melting ice, water dashing down the street, a candle flickering to the beat of a bass drum, or modulating the twinkling moonlight on the icy snow as I walked residence from the studio. These moments felt like little meditations the place I used to be connecting tangibly with the world because it occurred and taking within the marvel of those mundane pure processes that we ignore taking place throughout us.
As luck would have it, at some point I pulled out my smartphone, and I noticed my TV by means of the digicam and it occurred to me to take photos of my display. Later that night time as I used to be binge-watching madmen and determined to carry my cellphone in opposition to the display and begin taking photos and recording. Enjoying with focus and scale additionally allowed me to take away context from my photos and create one thing that didn’t exist earlier than which was nearer to a portray than {a photograph} and extra alive because it appeared to have inbuilt optical results like interference patterns. I used to be fascinated at how I may obtain outcomes that seemed like digital artwork or web artwork however by exploiting the sudden and unintended interactions attainable between a digicam and a display and with out the usage of any software program. I by no means noticed myself heading down the trajectory of constructing summary lens-based work nevertheless it was so visually wealthy and visceral, and my course of meant I may make work whereas at my job with simply my cellphone and my laptop computer.
After years of working on this manner and performing some residencies, I discovered myself slowly permitting some context and illustration in my work, beginning to present a number of the actual world by means of this digital lens. In the course of the pandemic I grabbed a GoPro MAX and began doing these ambient 360 photographs of my home and its environment, a home that I had lived in on and off with my mom and canine since highschool. This felt like I used to be popping out of the opposite facet of this summary esoteric digital rabbit gap I began in so way back and my apply was coming again round full circle to displaying the sights and sounds of the actual world.