DataMine
The selfie. What began as a personal expression to friends and followers, is something more…not just as a compilation of photographs, but of many data points in the continuous stream of information we ourselves create; generated by humans only to be analyzed by machines, and be replayed in ways that can ever so slightly alter our trajectory and re-chart our course; our society; elections; relationships.
#flex, 1 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#flex, 1 second
From over 10 million selfies downloaded, DataMine comprises over 1500 unique hand selected and hand placed images representing the number of selfies uploaded every 2 seconds.
From over 10 million selfies downloaded, #flex, 1 sec comprises over 750 unique images hand selected, hand placed, and organized by gesture.
Left: The Museum of Fine Arts Houston: The History of Photography: Selections from the Museum’s Collection, 2020
DataMine, 2 secs, Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, 87 1/2 × 52 1/2 in. 2018
DataMine, 2 seconds
From over 10 million selfies downloaded, DataMine comprises over 1500 unique hand selected and hand placed images representing the number of selfies uploaded every 2 seconds.
#sinkbooty, 1 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#sinkbooty, 1 second
From over 10 million selfies downloaded, #sinkbooty, 1 sec comprises over 750 unique images hand selected, hand placed, and organized by gesture.
#duckface, 1 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#duckface, 1 seconds
From over 10 million selfies downloaded, #duckface, 1 sec comprises over 750 unique images hand selected, hand placed, and organized by gesture.
#preggo 1 sec, Archival pigment print, mounted on dibond, framed, 63 1/2 × 38 1/2 in, 2018
#preggo, 1 second
From over 10 million selfies downloaded, #preggo, 1 sec comprises over 750 unique images hand selected, hand placed, and organized by gesture.
DataMine, 2 Seconds (Right) and #Flex, 1 Second (Left) Installation View
DataStream
Datastream is constructed from thousands of clips of selfie footage posted on social media. Downloaded, aggregated, and strung together for the film, these clips or selfie movies contain reoccurring gestures, facial expressions, and camera perspectives. As one portrait disappears from the screen, it is replaced by another, revealing the uniformity of the modern-day portrait.
DataStream — An Installation, 2021, 7-channels on security monitors, 53 1/2 x 11 3/4”
Sector
Three unique pieces, each a compilation of more than 2,500 selfies that contemplates data at rest. The images are individually processed, hand-sorted, and organized by tonality to represent the number of selfies going up onto the web every 3 seconds.
Sector I, 3 Secs, Archival pigment print, 50 3/8 × 30 in
Sector III, 3 Secs, Archival pigment print, 50 3/8 × 30 in
“From afar, many of these images are reduced to something like old school television static, with buzzing layers of black and white seeming to resolve into stripes, but then dissolving back into crackly noise…up close, the amazing diversity of humanity seems to be collapsed a bit, each of us looking largely like our neighbors and friends when placed in front of a mirror with our smartphones.” —Collector Daily
11,440 Selfies
11,440 Selfies is a composite work aggregated from 3 years of harvesting more than 10 million selfies from the Internet. Each photograph was sorted by brands, gestures, objects and tonality and then hand placed into a massive 68GB composite work; arranged to imitate computer technology in data mining and its creation of large data sets.
The number, 11,440, represents 15 seconds of selfies uploaded to the web; from the estimated 24 billion that are uploaded every year. The work represents a tiny segment in the continuous flow of images constantly being uploaded to the Internet from people from all over the world.
View NFT Collection
From these amassed images, surprising repeating patterns emerged – people posing with cash or guns; or holding a specific brand, like a Starbucks or a Coke. Patterns of gestures also appeared within specific selfie hashtags, such as the ‘mirror selfie’ hashtag, like raising an arm to flex or putting a leg up on the bathroom counter, demonstrating how diverse we are and yet similar in elemental human behavior. Sometimes a person who had photographed themselves hundreds of times kept appearing from the download of images, and they, too, are grouped together. Similar to how a data company sorts individuals into categories, large segments of these repeating patterns are grouped throughout the work and function as data points in the stream of information we ourselves put out into the world; ready to be analyzed and replayed to us in ways that can alter the course of history.
11,440 Selfies, Full View