The first ever global contemporary art archive on the moon.
The Time of Speed / The Speed of Time Encryption Paintings (NFTs based upon…) In the 1990’s, I was a visual artist who generally found artworks made with computers and digital tools to be less than satisfying — visually. At the same time, I had long held interest in the transformative way that the internet and digital technologies were changing the world -- (inspired in large measure by having lived with a Berkeley Unix geek during my time at university in the early 1980’s). In 1999/2000 I set a challenge for myself: If I was SO interested in these technologies, and yet so dismissive of their common use in visual art production, what would I make that be visually compelling and simultaneously intellectually engaging? Encryption Paintings Encryption Paintings were the result of a deliberate process, culminating in generative works of art that intentionally wove together the analog and the digital, the hand and the machine, and created a labyrinthine experience of time. The Process Intentionally blurry photographs were shot onto film… Images of trees taken from a fast moving car. California Poppies in full bloom, shot while swinging my Nikon wildly from its strap. Glossy photographic prints were made, and those prints were then scanned at high resolution into digital graphic files. Once digitized, then each graphic file was run through encryption software — PGPFreeware v6.5.2 — which resulted in large files of seemingly random ASCII text, but which were, in fact, encrypted versions of blurry images depicted in the tiff files originally. Using a pirate copy of Quark Xpress, the randomized encrypted text version of each image (approximately 70,000+ characters each) was layered OVER the graphic image itself. The scale of the chosen font and size of the image was determined so as to maximize the amount of the image covered by the encrypted version of itself. The “color” of the encryption text overlaying the image was set to white, so that when the resulting images were printed onto large sheets of watercolor paper, the text was “knocked out,” ie., the white of the paper beneath was exposed and shown through clearly. This is when “the hand of the artist” came into play. My task at this point was simply defined: Using watercolor, I was to paint in each and every character from the encrypted version of the photograph with the best approximation of the color that WOULD have been in each white space left by the “knocked out” text from the encrypted version of the image itself. Three NFTs have been created, based on two different Encryption Paintings completed in 2006. 1Untitled (Two Ways) 2Untitled ((We’re Living On) Borrowed Time) – In Progress 3Untitled ((We’re Living On) Borrowed Time) – Detail Ian, I should have a website for my artwork up in the next few weeks… and I intend to make the catalog from the Encryption Painting exhibition available there, so we’ll be able to include a link to that, when the time comes…