Nicole Vella’s artwork “Text Me When You Get Home” explores human connection; what it means to connect with people and have those connections change. Over time, our thoughts and beliefs grow, causing the dynamics of our interpersonal relationships to shift. While these transitions happen, residual elements of ourselves are left clinging to one another with either hope or regret, as we grow together or grow apart.
Each piece centers on two complex forms connected with unique structures, some thin and tenuous, some thick and substantial. The highly detailed crystalline bodies appear glassine and solid yet are fused by fragile strings of malleable and stretched material. A duality which echoes the complexity of human relationships and the delicacy between opposing thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
“Text Me When You Get Home” is coded in GLSL within a single fragment shader. Each pixel reacts to the mathematics and logic within the shader software, exhibiting similar crystal properties to glass sculptures by the likes of Jack Storms. In this way Vella works as a painter using code as paint, programming a system to carefully color every point on the canvas.
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“N=12 is an experiment in building intentional community, with 12 artists collaborating across seven time zones. Contemporary computer-based artists create their work while connected to an effectively infinite network of information. This affords artists the capacity for infinite input and collaboration, leaving them to distill these disparate connections and experiences into their artwork. Distinctly, the computer artist’s principal tool for creation is also a means for connection. This exhibition leans into the inherent proximity of computer users by explicitly asking 12 artists to create work while in constant dialogue with one another. These artists convened and collaborated online over several months, sharing their code and artistic processes while fostering a co-creative microcosm enriched by weekly meetings, aesthetic critiques, code reviews, and vibrant discussion.” — Aaron Penne