Static Field I

2011 - Painting (Painting)

48 x 96 inches

Kamau Amu Patton

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Kamau Amu Patton’s painting Static Field I originates from a system of electronic and digital media. The image we see on the canvas was created by pointing a camera into its output—a gallery wall—and subsequently generating a feedback loop. Patton then records the distorted image, digitizes it and prints the file onto unprimed canvas with the help of a machine. Since canvas is a porous surface when unprimed, two people need to gradually spray the canvas with water and smooth out the wet surface in order for the machine’s potter arm to work. The result is a choreography between two people and a machine, working together in a way that is uncomfortable or unusual and constantly learning from each other. The distortion or visual noise we see—also called signature—emanates from the technology and the process itself. Similar to the familiar white noise we remember watching in our TVs, the noise is the result of atmospheric, electromagnetic, radio, and sometimes even thermal waves from nearby devices. Patton purposefully leaves this in to make the intangible tangible and capture traces of these invisible forms that are all around us.

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Kamau Amu Patton is a collector of the intangible. Using—or misusing—electronic media, he gathers sound, colour, light, and radio waves, which he then transforms through the prism of digital technology into artworks. Video feedback from a camera pointed at a gallery wall or a radio signal from a nearby antenna are examples of some of the inputs Patton uses, which are subsequently processed, digitized, amplified or re-routed through complex loops of information. Patton’s interest, however, goes beyond the visual outputs that result from the systems he deploys. For him, these intangible forms—whether electromagnetic or audiovisual—are lifeforms from the digital world that we’ve created, and as such, extensions of our own consciousness. With this in mind, as part of his process, he often responds to specific documents, archives and stories of specific sites in order to engage with the social and metaphysical dimensions of the media he uses.

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Colors:

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• feedback.n.01
• electromagnetic.a.01
• digital.a.01
• distorted_shape.n.01
• loop.v.01
• intangible.n.01