Laboriously Processed Algorithmic Drawing Series, 2020-ongoing
Materials: Tracing paper, highlighters, black pigment ink
Dimensions: A1
Awarded a Data Fellowship by the South-West Creative Technology Network (SWCTN), in 2020, in partnership between the University of the West of England, Bath Spa University, University of Plymouth, Falmouth University, Watershed, and Kaleider, Forrest-Beckett was invited as a New Talent Artistic Researcher and funded by Research England, to creatively reflect upon data alongside 23 fellows from academic, industry and creative backgrounds.
The Data Fellowship began when the pandemic hit and though she had separated from her marriage 2 years prior and divorce proceedings were amicable, as the Data Fellowship moved online and she became confined indoors with her laptop as her main source for communication, it was during this extraordinary time of solitude that she began to mourn this loss and her heartache began to surface.
‘Laboriously Processed Algorithmic Drawing No 6 (Breaking Away)‘, 2020
Opening-up her heart to Google’s search engine this tool became her closest confidante and while looking for a means to process heartache in a matter-of-fact way, with some emotional distance, she discovered Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic Theorem for Love.
Curious to see if she could visually exhaust the psychometric model that underpinned Sternberg’s measurement theory, she adopted his triangulated forms and began executing a pattern making process, as a means to slowly-process heartache. Following a colour-coding system that she tracked within a spreadsheet to map her permutations, she became transfixed by this triarchic process and sensed a symbiotic relationship form with machine learning.
Becoming a form of slow-processing algorithm, to date, 50+ unique pattern formations have accumulated, titled ‘Labour of Love: Laboriously Processed Algorithmic Drawing Series’, 2020-ongoing.
As means to share this process with her Data fellows during the pandemic lockdowns, she transfigured her algorithmic drawings into a series of digital images, accompanied by a disjointed form of communication. Titled ‘Labour of Love: Episode I Matters of the Heart and Mind’, a text to speech voice; named Michael, who utters word associations concerning matters of the heart and mind, which are loosely formed from a multiplicity of factors (playlists, poetry, facts, fiction, hearsay, and the odd advertisement). Overflowing with unbounded sequences, iterations, and potentialities, too much exposure to Michael’s wholehearted performance (or even a performance full of holes) can leave you susceptible to his uncanny spell, that sways between the comical, the empathetic and the eerie.
In Jane Bennett’s, 2010 text ‘Vibrant Matter: A political Ecology of Things’, Bennett shifts the focus from human experience to nonhuman forces and speaks to a ‘destructive-creative force-presence’ as an active energy that has the potential to impact change and bring renewed vitality. Distorting the human-centric worldview by pointing to the agency of the digital medium, in which, to consider how the digital can effect human thought and shape aspects of life, the ‘Labour of Love’ series is a work-in-process, centred around transfiguring the digital into the handmade.
While thinking about datum in its digital form and how it can become out of date if not maintained, the ‘Labour of Love: Stratified Relations Spreadsheet Series’, 2022-ongoing, came into being to highlight the misconceptions of data if presented out of context, to speak to the unstable nature of digital forms of referencing once web links become broken.
In 2010, Sean O’Hagan reviewed David Shields Reality Hunger, describing Shields style of writing as a ‘raw’, ‘unprocessed’, and ‘uncensored…genre-blurring 21st-century prose’ that ‘questions ownership’ in our ‘technology-driven culture’[1]. With Shields in mind, Forrest-Beckett envisages the ‘Labour of Love: Stratified Relations Spreadsheet Series’, 2022-ongoing, as printed monolithic, aluminium panels, in which the unruly, often untrustworthy and dynamic nature of electronic publishing becomes solidified. Proposing her unclickable and un-linkable web references as an act of petrification, the fluidity of hyperlink references are lost and only image and object remain.
Working title ‘All that Matters’ a constellation installation
Centred around the ‘Labour of Love: Laboriously Processed Diagrammatic Drawing Series‘, a white, hexagonal, cathedral-like room, with one wall dedicated as an altarpiece has 50+ ‘Laboriously Processed Diagrammatic’ drawings installed floor to ceiling. The permutations of each piece flicker a seemingly endless spectrum of changes. A luminous life source not harnessed between the organic effect of natural light and the stained glass of a church window throughout the course of the day, but the afterglow, left behind from too much screen time, transfixed between the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye.
The prismatic divisions of colour in the kaleidoscopic altarpiece continues through a series of hand-embroidered kneelers, on which you are invited to kneel at one of a series of white, individual prayer stands. Wireless headphones in place; provided at the entrance, once knelt, Michael’s disjointed form of communion begins. But unlike a preacher, Michael will not captivate you with eye contact and will misinterpret what he preaches. Far from harmonious and meditative, he speaks devotedly and the meaning in his madness makesway for reflection and connection.
To enter this white, cathedral-like room, a series of floor to ceiling monolithic, aluminium panels lean against the adjacent sides of a black, narrow corridor, spot lit from above. Layers upon layers of colour, interspersed by blackness create confusion, leaving you not quite knowing where to place your feet. Though it is difficult to sense where the ground level lies beneath your feet, the horizontal lines highlight the direction towards an opening of bright white.
Turning to leave the hypnotic altarpiece, data cloud formations seem to be clinging to the walls and ceiling, high above the crevice of the entrance, almost lost to the ether. What appear to be a mass of unclickable weblinks, do they pay reference to Michael’s proclamations, since some of his lines were recognisable? Beneath this bundle of back matter, the entrance is mirrored with a second dark crevice, to the left of the sign marked ‘IN’ is ‘BETWEEN’.
This second narrow corridor is unlit, but a way is led through the darkness by a flickering of coloured light. Down a black corridor reaching a black room, the centre is illuminated by a diamond shaped, digital eye which resembles a ‘Saturday Night Fever’ dance floor. In between winks an array of pattern formations from the altarpiece are momentarily transfixed, generating a pulse, your eye is then drawn upwards towards, where in the black expanse it is met by the florescent glow from a series of monolithic QR codes that encircle the illuminated floor…
[1] O’Hagan, S. (2010, February). Reality Hunger by David Shields. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/28/reality-hunger-book-review. Source cited: 20th May, 2022