PROJECT: DIGITAL INSTALLATIONS
Project Duration: 2012-Present

“There’s a difference between digging fifteen shallow wells and using fifteen tools to dig one” – Hindu Swami

Digital Installations: reshaping the artistic narrative.

Since 2012, one of the main inquiries in my work has been an exploration of pluralism in artistic expression, delving into a myriad of mediums, styles, and narratives. This has resulted in what I call ‘digital installations’, where I combine various art forms into an image, a sort of digital maquette that I release on social media as an exhibition. The image is a file produced digitally and the finished product is not a physical artwork, however individual pieces are, for the most part, physical works. 

These digital installations are reflections of an evolving conversation exploring the fluidity of contemporary expression. They offer a glimpse into a world of complexity that reflects our unfolding experience. The digital installations are windows into a multifaceted exploration of the world as I perceive it. Each installation is a poetic narrative that reflects my inner dialogue and attempts to make sense of the chaotic beauty that surrounds us. These works embody a fusion of introspection, experimentation, and a relentless pursuit of artistic authenticity. 

For instance, in my first installation Untitled Digital Installation, 2014, I blend elements of glitch, expressionism, visual data, portraiture, contemporary figuration and various mediums including print, painting, video, brushed aluminium print, gif animation on iPad, and mural elements. The result is a visual dialogue that challenges conventional boundaries. This juxtaposition reflects my exploration of pluralism, each contributing to a cohesive yet dynamic artistic narrative.

I aim to invite viewers into a space where they can navigate the complexities of contemporary expression alongside me. Making this work has been a desperately intense search to answer questions about where art stands today and where it might be headed.

 

Motivation and Exploration

I began this body of work in an attempt to make sense of my eclectic sensibility in my approach to art-making. I wanted to see if I could piece together a cohesive installation from varied pieces that seemed to have no relation but that I knew were trying to convey similar meaning. 

My digital installations are a multi-dimensional work that unfolds in layers, inviting viewers to delve deeper and discover new meaning with each encounter. This broad approach to working provides a playground of possibilities where many elements coalesce into complex juxtapositions.

The first installations began as an exploration of chaos and order. 

The work was initially perceived as scattered and disconnected, a frenzy of creative output that, to an outsider’s eye, appeared disconnected. However, this apparent chaos was a deliberate quest for coherence amid a world saturated with information and artistic possibilities. My first foray into digital installations marked a pivotal moment in my work, as I consciously worked to unify diverse elements under a common theme. 

At the heart of my practice is a deep-seated curiosity about the world and our place within it. My installations provoke introspection and challenge viewers to confront their assumptions about art and life, exploring the intersections of art, technology, and humanity.

One of the defining aspects of my journey has been a resistance against the pressure to conform or streamline my artistic practice for commercial viability or branding purposes. Instead, I embrace pluralism, recognizing that artistic dialogue thrives on multiplicity rather than uniformity. This ethos permeates my digital installations, where varied influences converge.

In my approach to digital art, I reject traditional categorizations, favouring complexity over simplicity. Rather than seeking neat resolutions, I embrace the inherent messiness and contradictions of our contemporary human experience. My work is a reflection of our fragmented reality, where identities are fluid, and boundaries between the physical and the digital blur.

 

Creative Process and Conceptual Themes

My creative process is characterised by a pursuit of freedom. In my studio, I navigate through various mediums and styles, allowing my artistic whimsy to guide the way. I feel stifled if I am working in a specific concept or style, and I need breadth and freedom to feel truly myself. The selection of elements for each installation is organic, driven by how they resonate with one another both visually and conceptually. I need that space to explore, innovate, and make mistakes. Following this, I organise this creative chaos into pieces that converse with each other. As these pieces initiate their dialogue, a theme unfolds, and the elements gradually form a cohesive narrative. This process mirrors how chaos often finds balance, or how humans find reason in chaotic events.

The process of creating each installation is akin to piecing together a puzzle. I start with a multitude of elements: paintings, sculpture, textile, digital art, sketches, videos, and more. They seem disconnected at first glance, yet, as I delve deeper, I discover hidden connections that bind them together. It’s like composing a visual symphony where each note contributes to a larger, harmonious whole. Each piece, whether an AI-generated glitch portrait or de-skilled figuration, contributes to a larger narrative unfolding within the work.

The balance between different artistic mediums, styles, and thematic elements within my installations is achieved through visual language. Compositional elements such as balancing shape, colour, and size play a significant role. The process is part design, part concept. Working digitally allows me to be objective about the work enough to think of it as a design element when building the composition. The concept is developed in the choosing of the pieces, and then it’s a matter of balancing them visually.

Choosing elements for each installation is an organic process rooted in how they converse with one another. It’s about creating a dialogue between colours, textures, shapes, and themes, in a language that speaks volumes without uttering a word. The installations themselves are abstract narratives, open to interpretation.

While each piece of the installation is a standalone work of art, together they form a larger work: the digital installation. Technology, far from being the sole focus, acts as a tool, or a means to an end rather than the end itself. It’s about using technology to enhance and extend the boundaries of traditional art forms while staying rooted in timeless themes and emotions.

The themes in my digital installations are like abstract poetry. they are open to interpretation, filled with visual elements that converse with each other like words on a page. Some installations are deconstructed portraits or landscapes, while others resemble diagrams attempting to decipher the world. These installations are essentially a diary of self-reflection, a means for me to understand who I am amidst a changing world. It’s about reflecting the complexity and multitude of human thought and emotion, and for me that it best explored through a mix of media.

 

Influences and Inspirations

I draw influences from a diverse mix of sources including de-skilled figuration, post-digital aesthetics, literature (specifically realist, postmodern and magical realism), expressionism, Spanish textiles, American folk painting, the study of belief systems, as well as many other peripheral influences. 

My interest in digital art emerged organically. It began around 2012 as I watched television during the time where televisions were changing from analog to digital. The poor connection caused a glitching, corrupt effect, and I found it mesmerising. I photographed and recorded video of the television for hours, trying to capture the fleeting images. This sparked questions about digital aesthetics as inspiration for painting and led to a lot of experimentation in a variety of mediums such as gif animation, glitch art, generative art, digital paintings, animated photography, social media projects and video. It was a rich and varied field for exploring, but the rapidity and breadth of possibilities felt chaotic and conceptually superficial. I was spending a lot of time focusing on the medium instead of the message. 

The glitch work specifically felt like technology becoming cognisant, like the glitching process was technology experiencing its first emotions. I started to do pieces that had a kind of ‘chaos mark-making’ that reflected the way I imagined a machine might think. Something that looks complex but in itself doesn’t mean anything. They looked like chaotic diagrams that a mad professor might make in solving a problem, but they were just wild marks. I thought it would be great to do one of these big diagrams on a large wall and incorporate various pieces into it, showing an artist solving a big chaotic problem. Except the problem cannot be solved by numbers or words, because it’s an abstract concept and the moment you try and articulate an abstract concept, it becomes something else entirely. 

In parallel to this exploration I was still very much in love with figurative painting. That, and black & white photography, abstraction, sculpture, writing, textiles, plants, furniture, jewellery… and on and on. It was a struggle to concentrate on one thing and zoom in to a concept. 

I felt that the ways in which I was attracted to working were incompatible as a practice, and so I began to seek out ways of blending elements to find the elusive artistic  ‘point of synchronicity’, where an artist’s work makes absolute sense.  

One of the main ways I tried to marry these influences was by merging figuration and digital elements into paintings that referenced both. As I worked to find that aesthetic, I wondered if there was a way that they could exist side by side and speak to each other as they were. 

With their varying styles and techniques, they evoked the essence of a group show, embodying different personas of the artist, or multiple selves within one artist, reflecting the complexities of identity and perception in the digital age. If the work was then turned into a physical show, I liked how the piece (as the installation) may never exist again. The idea of co-owning an artwork that has been ‘dismantled’ is also interesting, and i have explored that through various other works including ‘pieces of me’, an NFT project. 

The juxtaposition of the different ways of working felt chaotic and irreconcilable, but seeking this integration led to my first digital installation combining a myriad of styles and mediums.  It was initially conceived as a proposal for a physical exhibition at the Brisbane Experimental Arts Festival, 2012 in the form of a digital maquette. When it was not accepted, I launched it as a digital installation online, provoking all kinds of questions including: the nature of spaces, physical vs digital, what makes an artwork ‘real’, and a curiosity of what exactly was this thing I was making… 

The allure of this work existing solely in digital form, circumventing conventional gallery setups, and challenging preconceived notions of what constitutes an exhibition was particularly appealing. Viewing the installations as artworks in their own right, I focused on developing installations that possessed the dynamic qualities of a painting, creating a sense of movement and emotional resonance within the space. The shift in focus from physical to digital was liberating, allowing me to experiment with scale, placement, and space without limitations. There was no need for a physical space. This digital space was a space.  This realisation allowed me to play. I could do anything. I could paint on ceilings, floors, put up wallpaper… Where in the physical world there are financial limitations to what I can print, frame, etc… In the digital space there are no limitations.

I began to make more digital installations, and the process alleviated the pressure to conform and find cohesion. Instead, it allowed for a natural interrelatedness to emerge, and abstract narratives began to take shape. 

This breakthrough coincided with my exploration of postmodern authors like Zadie Smith and David Foster Wallace, who underscored the idea of using pluralism to make sense of our intricate world; a notion that resonated deeply with me. Their novels blend a multitude of concurrent themes and information into narratives that speak to readers on many levels while retaining an emotional connection. They are meaty, open to interpretation, and heavily nuanced, with elements of everything happening around them both in literature and in the world. They speak to the human condition, both in this moment and through time. The best way for me to understand what my digital installations are about is to read postmodern literature in this vein. 

In essence, my digital installations embody a synthesis of influences, a dialogue between traditional mediums and digital, and a reflection of the dynamic interplay between chaos and cohesion.

 

Role of Technology 

Technology is integral to shaping my artistic vision, acting as a tool rather than the focal point. When my interest in digital aesthetics was initially sparked, technology consumed my focus, overshadowing other aspects of my practice. In essence, ‘medium was the message’.  I consciously shifted to ensure that technology enhanced rather than dictated my creative process. This balance allows me to maintain a painting-centric approach while leveraging digital tools for artistic exploration.

I align with the post-digital painting movement, some of which incorporates figuration and technology. However, my approach is subtle; it’s been post-digital for years, although not overtly noticeable to most people. I often start with a digital painting sketch before translating them into physical artworks. I steer clear of an excessively digital look because it can feel too constrained and like an affectation or style. Technology, to me, serves as a supporting tool. I prioritise defining what I want to achieve artistically and then determine which tools, including digital ones, best suit that vision.

My goal is for technology to remain a background tool, supporting artistic expression without becoming the primary focus. When viewers engage with my digital installations, I want their primary experience to be emotional rather than technological. 

 

Challenges, Breakthroughs, and Artistic Autonomy

One of the enduring challenges with the digital installations has been the quest for suitable spaces to showcase them. The traditional gallery or museum setting often posed limitations and constraints that hindered my vision. However, a significant breakthrough came when I realised that the physical display of these artworks was not an imperative.

The pivotal moment arrived when I embraced the concept of digital space as a canvas in itself. This realisation opened up new possibilities, liberating me from the constraints of physical venues. I discovered that there is a unique beauty and curiosity in allowing installations to exist solely in the digital domain. By choosing to keep my installations in a digital space, I gained a newfound sense of artistic autonomy. These works transcend the traditional norms of art display, bypassing the need for elaborate art proposals, compromises with curatorial decisions, or the limitations imposed by physical spaces. 

Moreover, existing outside the traditional gallery or museum setting enables a direct connection between the artwork and its audience. Viewers can engage with these digital installations on their terms, without the formalities or barriers often associated with physical exhibitions. This direct interaction fosters a more direct experience..

In essence, embracing digital space redefines the concept of artistic presentation and accessibility. It embodies a paradigm shift towards embracing technological platforms as legitimate and impactful spaces for artistic expression.

 

The Future

As the digital installations evolve, I envision a deeper exploration of narrative-driven work. Themes will become more focused, yet the installations will retain their open-ended, poetic and playful quality. As my work evolves, I envision a more calculated narrative focus, with installations that stand beyond the digital conversation. I see the digital conversation becoming irrelevant, so the work needs to stand for something bigger than that. This process has given me cohesion and purpose.

I believe these works hold the answer to how we process information and emotions now. Over time, it has become clear that through my artistic pluralism, I was not digging many shallow wells but instead using many tools to dig one. The Digital Installations have been integral in learning this.

Looking ahead, my vision for the digital installations is rooted in narrative depth and emotional resonance. Each digital installation becomes a portal into a larger thematic exploration, inviting viewers to participate in a multilayered dialogue that transcends physical boundaries.

Clearly, technology has advanced a lot since 2012. For starters, we now have ai. This new tool has cracked opened what is possible with the digital installations in ways I could have never imagined. In retrospect, these installations seem quaint compared to what is now possible but they served as a launching pad.