Digital compositions printed on combinations of fiber suspended in the gallery; translucent Polyester Voile in the foreground, 15 “ in front of a related image on Polyester Charmeuse. Both images are created on these textiles through dye sublimation. As the viewer moves in the exhibition space, the relationship of the foreground image to the background image changes, shifting the meaning of each composition.
Inspired by visible and invisible traces of light waves, this exhibition pairs my early coded algorithmic drawings with my current digital weaving embodying the ephemeral trajectories of light. As particles of light move through nature, shadowing and reflecting off of surfaces, and distorting as they undulate through moving water.
I would incorporate algorithms that described natural phenomena—light waves, sound—hinto my vision and give presence to in my works. Not seeing the work on a screen wasn’t a disadvantage, the artwork was in my mind—in the envisioning. I saw that algorithms could be reconfigured, they were not a hard set of instructions but fluid, allowing me to transform ideas into new forms.
There was a spontaneity that was related to this process, that then related back into the series of works.
Inspired by the changing color of leaves moving in light and shadow with gusts of wind, I created floating color elements that are woven in and out of different color fields, changing the visual appearance of their color. This series of digital textiles was created by developing algorithms and then writing programs. For these textiles I used a Textronix computer terminal ( 720 ). These “tapestries” were then created using the 3M Scan-a-Mural process, printing the images on canal.
My digital textiles embody invisible phenomena in the natural world that are ephemeral yet physically palpable. The flow of imagery captures light waves reflecting off of irregular surfaces, and experiences such as patterns of wind currents brushing against the body. These immersive experiences are embedded in the digital tapestry through computer programming. I translated mathematical descriptions of natural phenomena, though mathematical formulas, into algorithms, and incorporated them into computer programs to create a sequential series of images that capture the experience of these physical phenomena. They are a materialization of this digital data created through the program, in collaboration with fiber.