2017
single channel video projection
90 minutes

The Beach is a single channel video projection depicting a tropical beach. The Beach seduces the viewer into an image-rich, meditative, and screensaver-like environment only to be disrupted at intervals by kaleidoscopic stimulates of sourced digital content. In The Beach my process begins with the compulsive sourcing of digital content (digital hoarding). Viewing the stock image as stereotypical and something accountable for an oversimplified standard or default way of seeing, I collect this media through Google, YouTube stock accounts, stock footage, and stock audio websites. Acting as digital ready-mades, in that they are pre-produced digital elements, I collect production overlays, sequences, and other means of pre-produced editing techniques. This content and formatting consisting of blunt, obvious, and shallow attributes are then compiled into an irrational mess, reflective of and embracing the sublime absurdity of contemporary digital life. In doing so, I aim to put forth questions related to the power and influence of digital content as well as the effects it might have on the perception of visual language. Through the process of sourcing, decontextualizing, and then re-contextualizing, I am also simultaneously misshaping and probing all aspects of digital content provided to me through the internet. In acknowledging internet culture as currently developing rapidly and unpredictably in an environment filled with over-stimulated and image-saturated media, I look towards something not far off from what I am already doing as an artist: the internet meme and video remix culture.