Mantismoth WW

The collection is inspired by itself. It was conceived amidst the illusion of a mistake during its creation. The program’s algorithm suggested a restart: error message, error message. “You’re doing it wrong: insufficient information to encode this collection.” No rational result could satisfy the eyes in the same way the senses do, and I’m not only talking about the 5 senses but the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and so on exponentially. The sense of corruption from a transcendent origin of physical life is undermined by the source code, or rather, by the idea that the algorithm has conceived about it, and it is this idea it’s coding at this moment to define what the artist need not reveal.

I visit a powerful place with my partner, a place that infuses my veins with wings. I take 20-30 photos of her positions in space. Then I return home, download the shots onto my software, and begin to pierce the alpha levels with a digital brush I created by glitching the setting code. I observe the ensuing visual chaos and then wait for a complete idea to emerge from my mind. As soon as I realize that I no longer have any idea of what I want to do, the chaos suggests the way forward. The pen on the graphics tablet is moved by the total silence of my rhombencephalic brain area. Possibly, the neocortical memory of my hard drive is connected via Bluetooth to my hand and collaborates with my central nervous system to go beyond the will to understand what it is doing.

Disturbance is the engine of the evolution of my work. Anything that creates instability and confusion, all visual or auditory material that can distract reason from its desire to claim a plausible motivation for what it has created or experienced, automatically becomes a vehicle for an approximation to the unknown. That is a vehicle for a push towards what our human nature fears most: the fear of becoming lost. Well, I’ve gotten lost... or maybe I’ve found myself in a lost place. They say the blockchain doesn’t forget; maybe it’s not ready yet to host something that could cause us to lose ourselves in its memory.

Scerbo