2016

After almost a two year pause, in 2016 I decided to start a new body of paintings which would be created using only digital images: captchas, semi-abstract images used to identify computers and humans; landscapes, painted live while watching them in Second Life; and nudes bought via Tumblr. The objective of it was to cover three cliché subjects in the history of painting: landscape, nudes, and abstraction, all of them images native to digital screens which were transposed to static screens (paintings on canvas).

 

As video was a central part of my artistic production I decided to follow the same path I had taken with paintings, so I decided to make video and photography using screens instead of cameras. I started a series of screenshots and screen recordings, which showed my screen while coding or while browsing the internet, and machinimas made in Second Life.  

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One of my first conclusions about painting computer screens was the way they revealed our social conduct and the way in which we establish relationships and make kin through digital technology. Captchas are images that confirm humanity, but they exist only because of interaction, either a human or a bot. I quickly felt fascinated with tumblr, as by this time I had gotten inside several communities that used the social network as an informal market which was their main source of income. It was the most successful hack to Digital Maoism. Most of this users lost their accounts two years after for legal issues related to tax evasion.