Alex M Lee

My work is an investigation on the possibilities of expressive digital imagery in an increasingly technical and automated world. Originally born out of aesthetic theory, my practice focuses on the creative employ of artifice and immateriality within the digital image. I consider the digital image in relationship to the phrase “technical image” coined by philosopher Vilem Flusser in which photography and mechanical reproduction heralded new forms of perceptual experience and knowledge. We are living in a digital age of the ‘elite technical image’ where increasingly complex technical software and hardware apparatuses are being utilized for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and experience. The products of these technical apparatuses often finds their way into my work expressively, culling from sources from science, science fiction, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and modernity. 

There is an additional phenomenological layer to some of my time-based works. The work utilizes the loop, slow pacing, and the relatively still to great effect. The temporal disjunction from the natural and endless repetition alludes to an abstraction of time and perception. The works connection to light is derived with algorithms within the computer, which I manipulate to great effect. I play with the possibilities found in data representation, machine learning, and physics simulation in order to arrive at a new formal possibility. Often times the work alludes to notions of the sublime or surreal within the context of the virtual but playing against concepts originating from simulacra.