analog
Divine Comedy is a series of 100 unique artworks that tell the tale of an artist’s journey through life and crypto art, each correlating to a canto of Dante’s classic work. Handcrafted over the course of 6 months using vintage Kid Pix software from 1993 – my first digital toolset!
The entire series is now available to collect, each work editioned on the blockchain as a unique erc-721 NFT.
Strabismus is a series of 100 looping video artworks by Sarah Zucker handcrafted on VHS Tape.
The series is being released through a ranked auction powered by Highlight, running 24 hours from May 1st through May 2nd, 2024. The work is being editioned on Ethereum.
“That’s 3D Art. Computers generate ‘em. BIG computers.”
Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld Season 6, Episode 6
I was born with a magic eye. Thanks to a condition known as “Strabismus,” my left eye marches very much to the beat of its own drum. You could say that it is “crossed,” but I like to think of it as a bit of a maverick.
Beyond a charming appearance, this has affected my vision my entire life. While most people perceive depth physically through the stereoscopic coordination of both eyes, I have adapted to calculate depth algorithmically in my mind. This often leads to double vision and the illusion of depth where there is none (and also causes me to bump into the furniture a lot when I’m tired).
Ironically, this made it impossible for me to perceive the images hidden in the “Magic Eye” series that became popular in my childhood (immortalized, of course, on a 1994 episode of Seinfeld.) The “unfocused” or “blurry” vision required to witness the illusion was my everyday reality, and I would give my tiny self a headache staring at those psychedelic color fields and willing them to take form.
It’s an experience that has stuck with me as I’ve developed my art practice working with computer graphics and analog video techniques. My new series, Strabismus, explores illusions of depth generated through digital video synthesis and analog time displacement.
Each work in the series aims to convey my own unique experience of depth – no crossed eyes required. I approached the creation of the work as a generative system, with my own personal optical algorithm and internal artistic feedback loop (a BIG computer) serving as the essential spice of randomness. The aesthetics emerged, no doubt, thanks to a year investigating and luxuriating in the work of Op Art pioneers like Bridget Riley, Yaacov Agam and Victor Vasarely.
This work evolved directly out of Temporale, my first long-form series editioned on the blockchain. Both projects distort the interlacing of analog video signal, where alternating bands of information yield motion. By directly manipulating this native aspect of the medium, I am able to weave together multiple timelines into a potent fusion of the temporal and the spatial.
Where Temporale channeled textural material video through this distortion to capture Time in a still image, Strabismus channels flat color motion through the distortion to conjure Depth out of Time.
I see each of these two series as independent yet undeniably related. I have always loved my own fluidity in moving between modes in my work, from the figurative to the abstract, the narrative to the expressionistic. But these two series reflect a new maturity, a desire to dig deeper and manifest my ideas on a greater scale than ever before. I remain as playful as ever, but am delighting in flexing my creative muscles.
Nothing is as it has been or will be. The Present is a strange singularity.
EVERYTHING’S DIFFERENT NOW is a signature VideoThought crafted in my studio in summer 2022. I was commissioned by Friends With Benefits x OpenSea, and this vision came through the channels. The piece will debut in an IRL installation as part of The Flock at FWB Fest.
I’ve been creating artworks in my “Now” series since 2018, and see them as a chance to reflect on the flavor of the present moment. This leads to statements that are paradoxically both personally topical, and universally evergreen.
I’m struck by the cumulative effects of recent change. Dramatic shifts around digital art and NFTs, the end(?) of the Covid era, and a lot of personal growth as I’ve met the call to level up my art practice.
VideoThoughts are special little mindgems: they use video feedback to visualize the recursive nature of experience itself. Everything is *always* different now, which in turn makes the next now even more different, and so on and so forth.
This is the genesis token on my new VideoThoughts contract provided by Manifold. Like all my single editions moving forward, the piece will integrate with SuperRare and elsewhere for an elegant cross-platform collector experience.
