SAIC

Oblivion Series

Oblivion (chapter one)

Oblivion (chapter two)

Set against an upbeat pulsing background Oblivion a cell-like object that travels through a shifting psychedelic organic-like landscape of squiggly lines, curving shapes and bizarre textures that nevertheless seem to recall a close view of some microbiome/forest full of life and organisms. In this way, KT Duffy seeks to enthrall their audiences and bring them into hypothetical biologies. Playful and enthralling, Oblivion, and by extension its creator, have created a merging of art, speculative biology and technology. 

Oblivion was born from KT’s residency in Finland, this allowed them to take long walk in the forest, something that is reflected in the visuals of the piece, it also is a reconnect with nature for the artist as America’s relationship with nature is adversarial at worst and commodified at best. This, alongside a different approach to community and freedom of movement made KT recontextualize their practice. As such, Oblivion takes a meditative quality, with the soundtrack imitating the rhythms of life while we witness this “organism” leisurely wander the space involved in its own rhythms changing or taking nothing in the environment it exists in harmony with. – Curator Rene Cepeda

Evidence of Our Own Primitive Nature magnifies moments of interaction and genesis within a series of speculative microcosms to propose an alternative modality, where no entity is bound to a singular device, reality, or substance. The title of the exhibition is taken from a line in Jeff Vandermeer’s “Annihilation Trilogy” whose main character is an invading biological entity which can neither be defined or contained. With the integration of digital fabrication and automated systems, Duffy creates an installation that recedes into the distance, disappears into the ground, and distorts the space around it. There is an implication of infinity that is emphasized in the modular aspects of the work and through visual mashups. The amalgamation of the physical sculptural aspects, automation, and color intensity, lend to the all encompassing effects of Duffy’s work. Duffy creates an environment in which the micro and macro coexist, and this conjures the viewers’ sensibility and awareness of the body seen on a molecular and ambient level.

Obscene and Uncontained captures a moment of chaos just before the death of a system. While the system swirls and swims fighting against it’s death we see new conditions and new microcosms begin to emerge.

As we work towards a better world for us all we must understand that through destruction comes forth creation.

This work is inspired by a lyric from Big Thief – and I can’t say that I’ll miss my human form, and I’ll crawl inside and cook until I’m born. The lyric suggests the ability to dispose of ones human meat suit and then crawl inside something to be born a new. Through segmented videos either behind or protruding from the form we witness the process of this transformation. As one things ends another is birthed, but often violent and chaotically. This installation captures a moment in between this destructive and generative life cycle.

Cataclysm/Catechism

My show at Coop Gallery! March 2021!

Inkjet Prints on PhotoTek, PLA, Tablets, USB cables.

In this work I explore the idea that we are increasingly ensconced in microcultures, where every individual has their own separate and unique perspective on the nature of reality

Jurassic Warp

Browser Based Multilevel VR Work built with AFrame

Prior to the pandemic this two person exhibition with Maria Luisa Sanin Pena was set to take place at Ground Level Platform, Chicago, but was cancelled due to the early COVID lock downs. The themes in the physical show involved ideas of waiting for connection, as my collaborator was at a residency in Croatia, and finding a reliable connection for our collaboration was difficult.

However, Using my web code expertise and A-Frame I was able to create a multi-level gamified VR experience as our exhibition. It featured a never ending waiting room, a game where dinosaurs jumped over cacti, an internet “gravesite” where vintage web components wait out their time until they become popular again, and an internet void with custom friction filled UX/UI.

In the work we utilized a lot of tropes you find in spaces of waiting, like water features, doctors office chairs, reception desks, dinosaurs and cati. Though the work was intended to be on thing, we were easily able to tweak the concept to apply to the early pandemic, which seemed like a never ending waiting room.

Intelligentbelligerent.space

Interactive Browser Poem
Web code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), p5.js, digital video

// establish a center point 

// create repetition from that point 

// use the point as the orientation from which an object will orbit 

// the feeling in between your eyes like your head might split in two 

// the transfixing glow of the screen and the nerve pain in your neck 

~~~~~~~~~

// logic and syntax make their way into my nightly processing

// rotating around a rotation which is rotating around the center point 

// wrapping and unwrapping and wrapping around the original wrap 

// a tangent based wobble 

~~~~~~~~~

// brute force to create an opening large enough to crash the whole fucking system 

// a way to touch an teak and glitch and break 

// tracking, excavating, updating, containing, method changing, modulating, printing, reprinting, printing, reprinting, printing, reprinting

// inheriting the size of the given spec, a singular existence 

~~~~~~~~~

// How do you navigate a system that was not designed for you 

// How do you navigate a system that you did not design 

// How do you navigate a system for which you cannot comprehend its means of creation 

// A big bang, a swipe of screen, a design that is simultaneous intelligent and belligerent

// It bends and twists your intentions into gestures, make you grasp for whatever footing or framework is available 

// Abjections emerging for the purpose of expanding every possibility to an incomprehensible degree 

Hard C

Tablets, looped animations, custom code, plotters drawings, found hardware, vinyl, Dimensions Variable

In this work I wanted to celebrate the thing that gives all technology life, electricity. Using a beautiful vintage power strip, I designed a form that the power strip could slice through, demonstrating its essential life-blood to the work.

The tablet that also slices through the form is powered by the powerstrip, preseting a symbiotic relationship between the entity on the screen, and the entity that produces the power.

As the viewer moves past the screen, the form slowly follows, using the onboard camera as a pixel displacement motion capture hack. As the form follows the viewer around, questions of sentience arrise. Is it thinking, can it see me, sense me? But even though the attention is placed on the moving entity, the installation and formulation of the work gives reverence to the lowly power strip, the life-blood of all technology, and in time the animating aspect or soul of AI turned sentient.