Sea Change (2015) addresses how computers manipulate our perceptions of nature. In this video, the artist creates a mathematical model of the water’s movement. As the ripples turn to data, the calming nature of the water becomes disorienting as it’s no longer tied to wind or the movement of oars. Tide (2015), a short study of Sea Change, isolates the movement of the water as pure data.
Digital America is currently featuring Daniel Alexander Smith’s pieces, Sea Change and Tide, as part of the Crooked Data: (Mis)information in Contemporary Art [site no longer live] exhibition at the University of Richmond Museums. Digital America also interviewed Daniel about asymptotes, the familiar vs. the removed, and more. Check out our Q + A with Daniel here.
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Sea Change (2015)
Tide (2015)
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Daniel Alexander Smith is a visual artist based in Cambridge, MA. In 2016, he completed an MFA Fellowship at Indiana University. In 2015, he founded Paper-Thin, an online virtual reality art archive which he currently directs and curates with collaborator, Cameron Buckley. In 2014, he curated Beyond Mapplethorpe, part of a collection of exhibits supported by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and the Kinsey Institute.
Daniel’s artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Boston Cyberarts, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the CICA Museum in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, the Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletronica in São Paulo, Brazil, the Athens Digital Arts Festival in Athens, Greece, the University of Notre Dame, the Carnegie Arts Center in Cincinnati, and the Center for Fine Art Photography in Ft. Collins.
Recent works include Unfixed Architecture, a large, multi-channel video commission for the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center Marquee; Four and No Waves, an installation addressing how computers re-frame relationships with nature; and Poly_Count, a collection of machine-made drawings exploring representation as a technological abstraction.
