Non-Sequential images;
I use non-sequential images to create a language of common social imagery, that the viewer uses to see new combinations from their background. My early interest in cultural knowledge, cultural group consciousness, has driven these works. We are wired to assess situations of safety-threat. Once you perceive a situation as safe, it becomes invisible to you and you stop assessing it. Based on a study by Travis Proulx: If you read a story that has a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion, a conventional story, something that is expected, it is in a way perceiving something as not a threat, other questions that are asked afterward you don’t think about them, they become invisible to you. that you don’t question. Conversely; If you read a story that throws you off balance, that is non-sequential a Kafka story, then you assess all-new situations differently, you look at them with fresh eyes. If your mind does not understand what you are seeing or experiencing, you keep trying to forge a narrative. By presenting a non-narrative image, a non-sequential image, you keep trying to make it fit what you know. Your mind struggles to make sense of it, trying to fill in the gaps. My artworks use non-sequential images to test the viewer’s understanding of culture. 2)
When the brain stores information it discards whatever is not necessary to the core idea. Details are dismissed and the seed of memory is stored, to be rebuilt when it is recalled.
I use different images in this way to create a language to be recalled. The ink drawing wall matrix is a wall of non-sequential images that the viewer can assemble. They can be specific to the viewer or part of an idea to assemble as a shared thought.
One of the drawings is Girl by Car Window. We see a young girl outside a car. She is angry, with a scowl. The drawing expresses hate, anger, fear towards the driver. There are two other images on the wall we can use to associate with this one. The first is Little Red Riding Hood, where a wolf is walking with her, trying to convince her that he is her grandmother, and the other where a wolf has a baby in its mouth. These three images together are quite powerful as ideas to recall danger, tragedy, and abuse. In this installation, there are many such shorthand combinations, not all of them bad. Using an Arduino computer, the images will light up in sets of three, for two minutes each, and run through several combinations. Then the entire wall will be illuminated for ten minutes.
