The changing city. The inorganic made living, in fractalesque complexity. This, for now, is where I have arrived.
When I put this in words for the first time, it became apparent that I’ve been exploring this concept of the fantastical cityscape for some time within my art. ‘Dream Park City’ and ‘City of Teeth’ are both works from 2016, attempts at surrealist city compositions that inadvertently became foundation for my present research.
After beginning to study the idea of what I’ve learned is called speculative architecture in earnest, my main goal became to strike a balance between the living and the man made. The art I encountered in my research keeps a distinct divide between these two concepts: the buildings within a city are lived in by separate organic forms.
I wanted to look further into what puts life within a city, especially since the concept of speculative architecture is very much rooted in futurism, where “human life” is a fuzzy term which can mean anything from flesh and bone people to fully digital minds. I started this exploration with inhuman figures populating my cityscapes, but even when abstracted, humanoid shapes still read as human, creating separation between them and the architecture.
What I’m doing now is trying to design a city that no one lives in, but which is still alive. ‘Into the City’ is I think my most successful attempt so far. By creating forms which, although shaped like a city skyline, are inhuman enough that one has a hard time imagining how an organic figure would live within them. A city with a population, but no people. I’m looking forward to finding out where this concept takes me. I might explore making partially animated images, something I’ve wanted to do for a while but haven’t had time to figure out. Onward and upward!
