Website: vlaminarca.com
Instagram: @velaminarca
"what about a string of pixels?"
Throughout this research I refer to a string of pixels, a home within that string of pixels.
Images that appear on screens are made up of strings of pixels.
Nonetheless, writing about images, in this case, seems more abstract, as I am referring not only to them but to this medium that expresses information in our daily lives. I refer to the different realities, dualities, that a line of pixels can pass through. They are vehicles for transmitting information (and disinformation) and sheltering diverse memories. We are so used to capturing these memories simply by opening a camera on our smartphones that sometimes we don't stop to notice nostalgic tones underlying in this society that has all its memories available electronically.
My artistic practice lays around concepts of home, rabbit holes, and diaries, however, is not only digital; although this comment might seem to go against the current research presented here. Understanding the feelings I have in relation to my digital home is intrinsic to embracing the concepts of a production that mixes the non-digital with digital.
A large part of my work involves a diary practice with photography, mostly analog methods, using various techniques for capturing light on negatives. After they are developed, I proceed to digitize and combine them with other digital techniques. Print the result, sometimes re-photographing the printed images, and re-scan. A process that permeates the analog with the digital in a cycle that sometimes resembles to the loop we experience in our online lives.
The process of diary, archiving, and research that I have in the digital environment is permeated by everyday life outside of this as well.
I prepare digital sketches for paintings by merging different images accumulated over the years, then painting those with a traditional technique of oil on canvas, and finally creating an augmented reality filter above, embracing the digital medium again.
In doing so, I also admit the fragility of the digital technical part and how perhaps in a few years, this part may become technologically outdated and cease working.
It makes sense, both for me and for the work, that one day, perhaps only that documentation of the digital part will exist. It is part of the concept itself.
I dare to say that a part of me is producing something that can inherently become nostalgic for losing its completeness in the future.
to be continued
