01
art
NEMATODES
"Some parasitic nematodes have an endosymbiosic relationship with the bacteria Wolbachia. Here, we reconstruct this symbiotic relationship and break it down, finding ourselves at the model's writhing core."
Peter Burr
Peter Burr (b. 1980) is an artist from Brooklyn, NY. A master of computer animation with a gift for creating images and environments that hover on the boundary between abstraction and figuration, Burr has in recent years devoted himself to exploring the concept of an endlessly mutating labyrinth. His practice often engages with tools of the video game industry in the form of immersive cinematic artworks. These pieces have been presented internationally by various institutions including Documenta 14, Athens; MoMA PS1, New York; and The Barbican Centre, London.
02:30
02
art
PATTERN LANGUAGE (times square)
Pattern Language, built in a video game engine, is a rhythmic, strobing composition. Employing cellular automata and crowd-simulation algorithms, this work envisions human life within a labyrinthine “Dirtscraper” – an inverted, underground skyscraper. Indistinct, nongendered figures in shades of grey walk through endless generative levels of lights and right angles, while others fill the screen with dots that bloom or wilt according to the classic “Game of Life” model developed by mathematician John Conway in 1970. Part of a larger project of the same name that has appeared from Kiev to Berkeley to Amsterdam, this work overtook Times Square in New York City every night in May 2018 as a part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment program. Viewers were immersed in the endless labyrinth which mirrors both the pointillist quality of Times Square’s LED billboards.
03
art
DESCENT (desktop performance)
In 1562, Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder completed a painting called The Triumph Of Death. In this panoramic landscape the sky is blotted out by black smoke; ships and dead fish litter the ocean shore; and an army of skeletons experiment with myriad death techniques. The living are badly outnumbered and the variety of fated tortures seems endless. There is little room for whimsy in this tableaux. Over 200 years earlier, a nasty plague, commonly known as the Black Death, left a cruel and massive mark on european civilization, wiping out half of Europe’s total population. This was a quiet pervasion of death - an invisible pathogen carried by herds of tired rats. This plague triggered a series of social and economic upheavals with profound effects on the history of medieval Europe, guiding its survivors into the sort of self-inflicted darkness pictured by the Elder Bruegel. Looking back at this historical trajectory, Peter Burr, Mark Fingerhut, and Forma have created a spiraling inter-dimensional narrative aptly titled DESCENT - a meditation on one of humanity’s blackest hours. Taking the form of a desktop application, descent.exe gives the user a brief glimpse of a world descending into darkness - an unrelenting plague indifferent to the struggles of the user. There is a silver lining, however, tucked into the software’s final sweep. An equanimous watcher, reduced to a single eye, looks on as the plague of rats that has infested your desktop destroys itself.
04
art
NEMATODES
"Some parasitic nematodes have an endosymbiosic relationship with the bacteria Wolbachia. Here, we reconstruct this symbiotic relationship and break it down, finding ourselves at the model's writhing core."
05
art
AUTUMN
Here, between the pixels - a pregnant pause of failure in the lub and dub of one's own heart. Music by Bear In Heaven
06
art
DROP CITY
Drop City is a portrait of a computer desktop community. It takes its name from the first rural hippy commune in America, a settlement in southern Colorado that formed in 1965 constructed of discarded junk, salavaged car tops, and other detritus fashioned into inventive living structures. A decade later Drop City was completely abandoned. Nothing is left of it today. Commissioned by Daata Editions.