TIME TRAVEL FOR DUMMIES
Digital & Physical Collection2023
4K PNG
materials:
latex, spray paint, cardboard, newspaper, plastic bags, industrial mesh
In this Hugo Award-nominated book published in 1961, a telepath accidentally acquires a powerful alien consciousness and must run to escape corporate assassins and angry mobs. This is a richly imagined tale of prejudice, corporate greed, oppression, and, ultimately, transcendence.
The artworks were initially created physically via methods of abstract expressionism. Then, the scanned artworks were given a generative digital treatment to present a fine pixelated effect visible when an artwork is viewed in detail.
The artworks present a landscape of the distant world where the main character of the book Shepherd Blaine encounters an enormous pink creature. The otherness of the being is complete, however it surprisingly telepathically says
'Hi, pal. I trade with you my mind.'
in Blaine's thoughts before the human is jerked back to Earth as his time on the planet comes to an end as part of a routine procedure of this expedition.
Now back in the familiar Earthly Mexico office with buzzing machinery all around, Blaine is immediately aware that his body now hosts two conscious entities. And he'd soon find out his hitchhiker would teach him all about Time and how it works and can be controlled at will.
Simak's works are extremely effective in establishing a world where highly fantastic events are presented as a routine part of society. This allows the story to unfold in a way that the reader can recognize the inherent human determinants of behaviours and characteristics regardless of the fantastic landscape.
The sharp contrasting colours of the artworks and the chaotic merge and splurge of shapes on the pieces express the constant struggle within each human between the spectrally dualistic emotions and thoughts that live within the human experience at any given moment.
Each moment is the building block of a lifetime.
These moments live in the artworks in the shape of pixels which in essence, make up the entirety of the pieces.
Our own perception of each moment elongates or shrinks time in our subjective experience, however each time frame is exactly the same length and shape as the others. Herein lies the secret of time travel - if we’re able to grasp the moment in its subjective existence, we’re able to time-travel through life and space at will.
One can begin to grasp that essentially, context will only house what humans already hold inside and are dominated by - their internal landscapes of fear or greatness, greed and prejudice or ability to extend oneself to help another, discrimination against others and the desire to put oneself in another's shoes.
Human life will always be dominated by conflicting and contrasting emotions, thoughts and urges. This body of work's purpose is to remind us that these are always present at the same time within us and aren't separate. Contrary, they are in fact quantities of the same characteristics and it's our conscious or unconscious choices that make them change and realign with our internal landscapes and the kind of world we wish to create and be a part of.