Eidolon

Media: digital prints, Processing code, interactive projection with drawing tablet
Dimensions: 38cm x 63cm
Year: 2013
Exhibitions: The Carrack Modern Art, The American Underground, Capitol One, ICAT, Armory Gallery

Eidolon is a digital print series created by a generative drawing system. The series explores the distinctions between indeterminacy, randomness, and chaos, and examines the limits of human perception and memory. Each composition utilizes an underlying language of code, not immediately apparent to the viewer. While appearing at first to be semi-random configurations, the compositions gradually reveal their structure through the viewer’s drawing interactions with the projected Eidolon code.

Each framed composition represents a developmental stage in the building of the system’s fractal architecture and is derived from the Sutcliffe pentagon, a fractal structure discovered by the first chairman of the Computer Arts Society, Alan Sutcliffe. Pen gestures on a drawing tablet introduce an element of interactivity that mutates and contributes to the evolution of the visual composition. This enables an interaction between the viewer and semi-autonomous system at play leading to new forms of chaos and control and the know and unknown. For me, these compositions mirror the human condition, possessing elements of individual control while being subject to the hegemonic system at play.

Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem, Eidolons, the compositions are paired with stanzas to jointly examine the subtly messy process of meaning-making, memory, and the illusion of permanence inherent in the human experience.

Eidolon 1

Eidolon 2

Eidolon 3

Eidolon 4

Eidolon 5

Eidolon 7

Eidolon 8

Eidolon 10

Eidolon 11

Eidolon 15

Eidolon 17

Eidolon 12

Eidolon 13

Eidolon 14

Eidolon 16

Eidolon 19

Eidolons

Walt Whitman, 1900

I met a Seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean Eidólons.

Put in thy chants, said he,
No more the puzzling hour, nor day--nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest, as light for all, and entrance-song of all,
That of Eidólons.

Ever the dim beginning;
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle;
Ever the summit, and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)
Eidólons! Eidólons!

Ever the mutable!
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering;
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
Issuing Eidólons!

Lo! I or you!
Or woman, man, or State, known or unknown,
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
But really build Eidólons.

The ostent evanescent;
The substance of an artist's mood, or savan's studies long,
Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,
To fashion his Eidólon.

Of every human life,
(The units gather'd, posted--not a thought, emotion, deed, left out;)
The whole, or large or small, summ'd, added up,
In its Eidólon.

The old, old urge;
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo! newer, higher pinnacles;
From Science and the Modern still impell'd,
The old, old urge, Eidólons.

The present, now and here,
America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
Of aggregate and segregate, for only thence releasing,
To-day's Eidólons.

These, with the past,
Of vanish'd lands--of all the reigns of kings across the sea,
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages,
Joining Eidólons.

Densities, growth, façades,
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
Eidólons everlasting.

Exaltè, rapt, extatic,
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape, and shape, and shape,
The mighty Earth-Eidólon.

All space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling, collapsing, ending--serving their longer, shorter use,)
Fill'd with Eidólons only.

The noiseless myriads!
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty!
The separate, countless free identities, like eyesight;
The true realities, Eidólons.

Not this the World,
Nor these the Universes--they the Universes,
Purport and end--ever the permanent life of life,
Eidólons, Eidólons.

Beyond thy lectures, learn'd professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope, observer keen--beyond all mathematics,
Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy--beyond the chemist with his chemistry,
The entities of entities, Eidólons.

Unfix'd, yet fix'd;
Ever shall be--ever have been, and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
Eidólons, Eidólons, Eidólons.

The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves--in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy--interpret yet to them,
God, and Eidólons.

And thee, My Soul!
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations!
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
Thy mates, Eidólons.

Thy Body permanent,
The Body lurking there within thy Body,
The only purport of the Form thou art--the real I myself,
An image, an Eidólon.

Thy very songs, not in thy songs;
No special strains to sing--none for itself;
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,
A round, full-orb'd Eidólon.