Shifting Ground

Shifting Ground is a long-term project that explores the transient nature of identity, memory, and presence in a world increasingly mediated by data collection and usage. Using hand-picked Google Street View images from years-past as the source material, these works have undergone a series of distortions and reinterpretations that widen each environmental moment into vast hyper-colored topographies. These transformations are created through artificial intelligence systems customized by the artist, and represent the expansive fragmentation and reassembly of both the physical world and our personal narratives. The resulting landscapes serve as metaphors for the fluidity of life, morphing human figures into bird’s-eye imagery that reshapes seemingly fleeting and inconsequential moments from the vast Street View database.

The work specifically draws from the aesthetics of topographic Landsat imagery, revealing organic forms and fluid landscapes whose wild colors portray the chaotic realities of data interpretation. The abstracted remnants of real human forms somehow impart these fictional landscapes with an enriched perception of interconnectedness and evolution, while simultaneously obfuscating any sense of identity, or even reality. In this disassociation from the original image, and any immediate comprehension, something new emerges that embodies our rapidly evolving digital existence where nearly everything is recorded, yet nothing remains fixed. The results reflect the dynamic nature of how we see ourselves, our pasts, and our surroundings: grand tapestries that highlight the impermanence and beauty of our everyday lives.