Ashley Zelinskie

Statement

This work is not for us. It is for the future. That is, each of these pieces takes for granted that computers will outlast their makers, that technology will supplant humanity, and that craft should follow suit. This is art for the Singularity. Today, rigorous science and pure math maintain unbridled influence over technology – as such, our digital heirs are slated to inherit nuanced programming and breathtaking technical specifications. We are bound by duty to pass culture forward yet remain constrained by limitations: how can we sufficiently communicate this history and dialog to unknown and unspecified replacements? This work is an attempt to answer that question and, in fact, to begin that process – the process of translating our vast artistic and social history, in familiar language and appropriate media, to machines. Using simple code, recursive structures, redundant patterns, and emergent media in novel combinations, this work transcribes humanity – for a future without it.

Artworks

Mobius is also a Reverse Abstraction but this time experimenting with a one sided object. Abstraction is a term both used in art and technology. Abstraction in art strays away from the recognizable whereas abstraction in computer science means the opposite for humans but the remains the same idea for computers. As something becomes more abstract in computer science it becomes more recognizable to humans and more complicated for the computer. Binary code is the furthest from abstraction a computer can be. To a computer this is recognizable but a user interface, for example, would be considered abstract to a computer.

Diamond is part of the Reverse Abstraction series. This work falls into the geometries sub category in the series. This particular work is a scale model of a larger sculpture garden work in my Platonic Solids series to be built at the US embassy Saudi Arabia 2014 As part of the Reverse Abstraction series, The Platonic Solids project represents an important step in rendering all of human art and culture conceivable to machines. The five platonic solids – the tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron – have been revered since antiquity. Their unique characteristics of symmetry and aesthetic appeal have made them cornerstones of math, science, art and mythology for millennia. Their rare perfection and role as nexus for so many cultural strains positions the platonic solids as essential starting points for communicating human culture to machines.

This Reverse Abstraction plays with the push and pull of internal and external space and overlapping of text. The Reverse Abstraction series begins with a simple premise: that humans and computers perceive the world through different languages, and what is concrete for one is abstract for the other. The objects and shapes so familiar in human art can be neither perceived nor conceived by computers in their original form. Likewise, the codes that are so familiar to a computer are merely scattered symbols to human sensibility. The Reverse Abstraction series attempts to bridge the gap by constructing traditional objects in dual forms: as the classical object and as the hexadecimal and binary codes that represent them. Thus, abstraction becomes material, the meanings for humans and computers are united, and the duality is resolved.