The Dream Life of Data

2024

Language tends to organize the world in a functional way, but in the virtual realm it’s data that makes things happen. Because data is a type of language it also has the capacity to act otherwise, to produce other states of consciousness. In The Dream Life of Data, 2024, I develop my photo-collage techniques from the 80s with digital tools. I use AI ‘text to image’ and other internet apps to generate source material. AI is, after all, just another tool. I intentionally plug in confounding texts not readily parsed by large language models so the results produced tend to the off-beat. Using surprise and recognition as guides I navigate these fragments in search of a synthesis. I’m lead by the material and I entertain whatever accidents or artifacts present themselves. This method allows access to a state which I experience as playful, poetic, mysterious, metaphoric, somewhat uncomfortable, maybe a bit spiritual but certainly a release from the ordinary. Consequently the images tend to possess an otherworldliness that veers toward the ineffable. The Dream Life of Data provides an escape from the tyranny of the instrumental, an entry into imaginary realms that see things differently.