Stupid Computer
These works, developed in the fall of 2014, grew out of themes present in the Ghosts/ Green Screen paintings. In these works the common experience of sitting or standing at a computer for many hours is satirized and revealed to be just about as stupid as we all know it is. And yet we keep doing it, fascinated by the internet’s steady stream of information and banal clickery. The position of the body in relation to the computer is one that fascinates me, as we generally hunch over in front of the screen as if taking communion at a kind of shrine, the dispenser of the morning email. The memento mori altars I have been constructing, still lifes as symbolic landscapes, find an analogy in the computer desk and within the “desktop” itself. One primary issue in the adoption of new technology is the way we often don’t recognize what we are losing in the trade. Are you smarter than your smartphone? And always the underlying question remains, in terms of cybernetics and connectivity in the period of late Capitalism: Who is using who? If computers are replacing people, we have to wonder who is truly stupid? And yet, in an absurdist world, we can only laugh and remember, it’s only a machine. At least for now.
