A FIXED RESISTANCE Pigment Print on Wallcovering 12.5 x 55’ The composite wallpaper is made from photographs of sand dunes I took in California and found images of the desert landscape in the Middle East and the Sahara Desert.
Best of Both Worlds Digital Animation 00:12:11 2016 The skinning of the booth is mirrored in the 3D animation, Best of Both Worlds, where the body is presented as a deconstructed digital skin – the result of algorithmic pixilation vis-à-vis the technology used in the production of the video. In this case, the scan is animated through a looping Vinyasa Yoga Sequence. The peice imagines a body that has crossed through the screen in a kind of stasis of maintenance; trying to repair a form wrought by digital translation.
The prints of the series, SLOW MOTION MIDNIGHT SPREAD, are comprised of layered stills from an animation of disembodied hands signing the words SLOW MOTION MIDNIGHT SPREAD. The words were pulled out of conversation I had with an astrologer and psychic after meditating on the anxiety I felt about environmental degradation and the future of the globalized economy. I was hoping the psychic could help reconcile the anxiety I felt about the future using the stars to connect me to the expanse of the universe as a palliative measure. Instead, she pinpointed somatic manifestations of my worries, much of the conversation centered on ridding my body of the internalized symptoms from a global dis-ease.
A Fallen Pixel (I) & (III) Foam, Polyurea 28.25 x 17.50 x 17.25 in, 18in x 11 x 11.25 2016 The prints of the series, SLOW MOTION MIDNIGHT SPREAD, are comprised of layered stills from an animation of disembodied hands using American Sign Language to sign the words SLOW MOTION MIDNIGHT SPREAD. The words were pulled out of conversation I had with an astrologer and psychic after meditating on the anxiety I felt about environmental degradation and the future of the globalized economy. I was hoping the psychic could help reconcile the anxiety I felt about the future using the stars to connect me to the expanse of the universe as a palliative measure. Instead, she pinpointed somatic manifestations of my worries, much of the conversation centered on ridding my body of the internalized symptoms from a global dis-ease.
NO SEAMS TO MATCH Custom Printed Silk, Custom Hardware 56 x 26 x 111 in The fabric sculpture, No Seams to Match, is a reconstruction of a life-size military bunker sewn from silk printed with two patterns created from photographs I took while standing seaside looking back at the bunkers. The interior walls are printed with the composited images, the exterior wall are printed with a normal map* of the same image. I was interested in the bunker as a uncompromisingly horizontal architectural manifestation of surveillance and desperation; perhaps the only building truly designed for cyborgs. The translation into fabric relaxes the brutalist paranoia; rendering the bunker soft and transparent. *In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents on a surface. It is used to add details without using more polygons.
An Additive Inverse Plaster, Graphite, Pigment, Wood, Plexiglass 11 x 11 x 50 in 2015 The fist is a direct cast of the artist's’ hand covered in graphite, a naturally radioactive resistant material. Holberton is interested in the hand as a symbol of solidarity, labor, and physicality. While our experience of technology is increasingly psychological and virtual, the hand continues link us with the technological; swiping screens and sensors that translate between the retina (the cognitive/virtual) and the hand (the biological/physical).
SLOW MOTION MIDNIGHT
The installation SLOW MOTION MIDNIGHT SPREAD blurs the boundaries between screen and object. The body of work was presented in the curated section of Zona Maco Sur in 2016 and pivots around two poles. The first is the collapse of the biological human into geologic time. The second, is the notion of the ghost in the machine. Not in the sense of the anthropomorphism of the machine, but more closely related to Tom McCarthy’s argument that new technologies provide the dangerous illusion of frozen time, denying the inevitable passage toward illness, death, and decay. This freezing of time within virtual space is completely incongruous with the passing of time on the other side of the screen. The works navigate the sliver of space between the retinae and the screen – the portal between fantasy and reality. What will happen when the sliver between the imagined and the real expands as the displays become more integrated and transparent in our experience of the physical world?
The fabric sculpture, No Seams to Match, is a reconstruction of a life-size military bunker sewn from silk printed with two patterns created from photographs I took while standing seaside looking back at the bunkers. The interior walls are printed with the composited images, the exterior walls are printed with a normal map of the same image. I was interested in the bunker as an uncompromisingly horizontal architectural manifestation of surveillance and desperation; perhaps the only building truly designed for cyborgs.
The translation into fabric relaxes the brutalist paranoia; rendering the bunker soft and transparent. The wallpaper, A Fixed Resistance, creates a Mise-en-scène for the installation; composited photographs of wandering sand dunes I took on the decommissioned Salton Sea Military Test Base in California and found images of the desert landscape in the Middle East and the Sahara Desert.
