Gray Area Showcase Summer 2021

Settling on the earth like a dust cloud is a thickening layer of images. They are accumulating upon all surfaces. More than half a billion new images are uploaded to social media every day. Derivative images, like thumbnails and proxies, used as images to allow computers to talk easily for each other, easily quadruple that number. The speed, scale, and volume of images today give it a "nonhuman" quality, as if they operated on the plane of the "hyperobjects" like the environment and the cosmos. 

I use photogrammetry to channel this new nonhuman turn in photography. I scan scenes I experience in my every day life, and intuitively rearranged them into collages of my own creation. These scans emulate the phenomena of existing in this new image-covered world, but they also are a speculation on what it means to be able to make that world beautiful. In a kind of science fiction way I hope to show these scans in their native worlding format, and have made this interactive website to view these scans in full dimensions. Rotate you head to view my collages from all angles and immerse yourself in the image.

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

Breath, our most intimate connection to life, is, for a machine, a marker of an inefficient system... a loss of time. A machine can only perceive breathing as an interruption of data, a flaw in the data. Because of this, it is inherently biased to never understand the subtleties that make us human. What if we could, for a moment, grant the machine the possibility to breathe? 

"Teaching a machine the meaning of breath" is a prototype that imagines a new communication system between the organic and the digital by means of a breath pattern, an arduino, a computer fan and an inflatable surface. The fan modulates its speed depending on the breathing rate thus changing the rhythm of inflation. By observing a breath, the arduino learns to simulate the cycle of exhalations and inhalations that create one of the essential elements to human life. 

Recombinant Media Labs & Gray Area & STRRR TV & Minds Over Matter present Recombinant Rebound, featuring the RML CineChamber, a 360° surround adventure in immersive sound, spatial cinema and sensory strangeness. This distinct environment features two decades of panoramic performance created exclusively for the CineChamber, including the premiere of a new solo work in progress by Dimensional Holofonic Sound.

Recombinant Media Labs & Gray Area & STRRR TV & Minds Over Matter present Recombinant Rebound, featuring the RML CineChamber, a 360° surround adventure in immersive sound, spatial cinema and sensory strangeness. This distinct environment features two decades of panoramic performance created exclusively for the CineChamber, including the premiere of a new solo work in progress by Dimensional Holofonic Sound.

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).

This is a digital preview of a projection mapping work in progress. The finished piece will consist of three framed sculptures / projection surfaces arranged in a triptych. The patterns are generated with face landmark data detected with machine learning.

This is a digital preview of a projection mapping work in progress. The finished piece will consist of three framed sculptures / projection surfaces arranged in a triptych. The patterns are generated with face landmark data detected with machine learning.

On the 9th of September, 2020, residents of the San Francisco Bay Area woke up to an orange sky. Wildfires had been raging for several days and the layer of smoke was more than enough to turn the sky an orange-red, giving us an experience like no other we had had before.

Using photos and videos from both his own work and media reports of the day, combined with in the field audio recordings of natural and man made sounds, the artist seeks to preserve this experience and contextualize it in a larger discussion around climate issues and how humans have affected the natural cycle of the world.

This is a rough cut / work in progress of a single screen edit of this video piece that is being produced as a 10 screen piece for the Cine Chamber for exhibition later this year.

Settling on the earth like a dust cloud is a thickening layer of images. They are accumulating upon all surfaces. More than half a billion new images are uploaded to social media every day. Derivative images, like thumbnails and proxies, used as images to allow computers to talk easily for each other, easily quadruple that number. The speed, scale, and volume of images today give it a "nonhuman" quality, as if they operated on the plane of the "hyperobjects" like the environment and the cosmos. 

I use photogrammetry to channel this new nonhuman turn in photography. I scan scenes I experience in my every day life, and intuitively rearranged them into collages of my own creation. These scans emulate the phenomena of existing in this new image-covered world, but they also are a speculation on what it means to be able to make that world beautiful. In a kind of science fiction way I hope to show these scans in their native worlding format, and have made this interactive website to view these scans in full dimensions. Rotate you head to view my collages from all angles and immerse yourself in the image.

Settling on the earth like a dust cloud is a thickening layer of images. They are accumulating upon all surfaces. More than half a billion new images are uploaded to social media every day. Derivative images, like thumbnails and proxies, used as images to allow computers to talk easily for each other, easily quadruple that number. The speed, scale, and volume of images today give it a "nonhuman" quality, as if they operated on the plane of the "hyperobjects" like the environment and the cosmos. 

I use photogrammetry to channel this new nonhuman turn in photography. I scan scenes I experience in my every day life, and intuitively rearranged them into collages of my own creation. These scans emulate the phenomena of existing in this new image-covered world, but they also are a speculation on what it means to be able to make that world beautiful. In a kind of science fiction way I hope to show these scans in their native worlding format, and have made this interactive website to view these scans in full dimensions. Rotate you head to view my collages from all angles and immerse yourself in the image.

In the sea, our underwater neighbors use sound, touch, and light to communicate. Abyss is a miniature world inspired by these communication systems, revealing itself and its inhabitants only when users interact with the world. Guide the camera with your mouse to find what lies in the depths of the world.

Incubator Artists 
- Brandon Eversole
- Jacky Lu
- Steven Piasecki

 Creative Code Immersive Artists 
- Carlotta Aoun
- Coley Mixan
- Janelle Chan
- Dave Elfving
- Tywen Kelly
- Zachary Leong

Breath, our most intimate connection to life, is, for a machine, a marker of an inefficient system... a loss of time. A machine can only perceive breathing as an interruption of data, a flaw in the data. Because of this, it is inherently biased to never understand the subtleties that make us human. What if we could, for a moment, grant the machine the possibility to breathe? 

"Teaching a machine the meaning of breath" is a prototype that imagines a new communication system between the organic and the digital by means of a breath pattern, an arduino, a computer fan and an inflatable surface. The fan modulates its speed depending on the breathing rate thus changing the rhythm of inflation. By observing a breath, the arduino learns to simulate the cycle of exhalations and inhalations that create one of the essential elements to human life. 

This self-portrait is a reflection of computation as an artistic medium as well as digital ontology. In this work, the artist attempts to reflect on his lived experience through neural networks and in doing so, create a representation of self within a computational medium.

The networks are trained on language models using the artist's own writings in 2021, the artist's traditional artwork, as well as online images. This piece is unfinished, and is a work in progress. 

Jacky Lu (@jackylu97) is a new media artist working across traditional media, computer graphics, and AI-generated artworks. A large portion of these images came through a collaboration with artist Nathan Blair (@nthnblair).