OVERGROWTH

‘Overgrowth’ is a series of video portraits. performative experiments   I use analog material to question the substance of digital renderings.  ‘Overgrowth’ confuses the viewer with an analog body adornment that is familiar but does not have enough visual information to decipher its materiality. The spherical shape is easily mistaken for something artificial or computer generated. When draped onto body, the textiles disfiguring the performers bodies like pixelated tumorous growths. However, the bodies are not impaired by the ‘overgrowth’, to the contrary they thrive and bask in their aesthetic. As the performers become comfortable in their appearance they gain self-consciousness ( self confidence?) and attempt to break-free of the prosthetic. They aggressively indulge and press and squeeze the spheres until they pop. Yellow seeds and red pulp begin to ooze out from the spheres, revealing that they are in fact tomatoes.

Computer monitors or smart phones lack tactility beyond shiny flat computer interfaces, yet we are able understand a sense of depth and texture based on our preexisting knowledge of the physical world.  We are able to justify characteristics of digital objects by relating them with their analog equivalent. What does this mean for objects that only exist within the digital realm?