The idea of intricacy comes from a preference towards things which have specific formal and material strategies, to make ambiguous the distinction between the two. That one is not enough for the development of a compelling object of production - something which is neither fully new and unrelatable nor one which is an expected and predictable sight. In this sense what these images attempt to replicate is the sensibility of the world of haute-couture fashion. Specifically, haute-couture fashion has the ability to fine tune degrees of clarity between the body and its veil, between the shapeliness of a dress and the material biases assembled.
The intent is to develop a visual language with qualities of the ephemeral and elusive. To make things which are not fully comprehensible but have details which are recognizable. This is a point of departure for a formal set of objects and systems of production.
A survey, manipulation, and intensification of the visual surface of the High Plains territory. At first the ground can be read as a subdivision of unending landscape, farms demarcated initially by New Deal policies for homesteading, arrays of oil extraction, or discrete fields of modern civilization and technology. All superimposed on an ancient topography morphed overtime by forces at the scale of nature.
These tapestries are studies to replicate the systems of organization present in this territory. It is a digital procedure intent on making indistinguishable the natural, physical, and digital manipulation of the current state of the land. Resulting in new ad-mixtures, a re-presentation of the landscape as a new site that we can intervene.
Null is at once a dialectic condition and process of equivalence. It treats specific characteristics as a flat ecology of things, an unbiased point of departure, where all are viewed without hierarchical bias. Instead of understanding null as a typically negative condition, here it will be defined closer to its mathematic and scientific terms—as a zero(ing), a base reference point for a given set of measurements. In this way, null(ification) is something in its blank nothingness. This is key to understanding the underlying mechanics of Owen’s Lake’s remediation.
Natural and manufactured phenomena are at once toxic and beautiful, as well as politics and ecology, attention and neglect. Owen’s Lake’s physical and digital information are compiled, presented, and projected as equal—blank but not empty, instead full. Aesthetic regimes, pragmatic solutions, neglected swatches, and idealized politics all operate at an equal degree of intensity inscribing both the actual landscape and virtual datascape of Owen’s Lake as null-scapes.
The nullification of Owen’s Lake is a possible aesthetic. It is not an end but a tendency towards the indiscernible, full of texturally ambiguous surface treatments, scaleless featuring, and narrow color ranges. This is the beginning of an anthropogenic sensibility.
The physical drawings are one offs, made from the manipulation of the drawing surface, producing traced lines of the tool path traveling between the digital linework. The drawings flatten the digitally produced linework, the coded instructions, and an intentionally imperfect translation.
