What happens when an app is used "incorrectly?" Is it a fly in the ointment or a season in the stew? Is there a way to make details matter, to slow down, and to be rewarded for staring? This is my attempt.

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At first glance, I wanted an abstract image that faintly echoes nature in its patterns—hints of branches and leaves, flowers, or foliage. An app does what it is programmed to do but on an unintended subject. The contrast of tone and exaggeration of color is the result.

I sewed onto the surface pixel-like knots mimicking digital lossy compression, inexact approximations, and partially discarded data. Once satisfied with the image, I embellish it; I attempt to reward prolonged looking by adding details that are not obvious and must be searched for. Embroidery floss becomes the smallest addressable element visible only through engaged staring.

 

Choosing the colors is my favorite part of the process. Sifting through a rainbow of threads is my happy place. This part of the decision-making phase requires me to stare at the digital patterns and determine where each point of color should be placed. It is at this moment that I am the most excited about the picture and what it will become.

 

My hand and time are only visible through the number of knots sewn. Each picture represents hours of repetitive labor and the gestation of a digital image into an analog one. My figures begin to callus, my neck and back ache, and I consume a lot of television while I slowly plot each knot.

 

These photographs are a hybrid of digital and analog. They are not insisting that one is better than the other. They are demanding to be inspected, to be stared at. They appear quick and abstract, but the slow look reveals the representation of nature, time, and labor.