The Merge series of digital images began as data collection and an examination of glitches in image software combined with the modification of a digital camera to automatically take long exposure photographs as I commuted between my workplace and home. This initial exploration generated over 198,000 images. This formed my first data set, and using glitches and “holes” I found in cheap consumer grade software I was able to create aggregate images of my commute. This compressed and combined the collected light in different ways that seemed to be more true to the experience of commuting in Houston at speeds exceeding 70-80 miles an hour.
Think of the first time you travel to a place.
Everything is new, and you may be double checking the directions, either on paper, or what the GPS is directing you to travel to, so your mind become hyper-aware. Is this matching up with my expectations? Is my trip leading me to the right conclusion?
(What if we could keep all of the data of our commute, and compress it into one image?)
Contrast that with the hundredth time you travel to the same destination. I find a lot of aspects become automated due to sheer familiarity. Because they are automated, they can be numbing. Merge is designed to become aware again of what has been made mundane.
The images below come from the commute data set.
The second generation of Merge images began in a similar fashion to the first. Generating a large data set of images from which to create various iterations. In this case the images come from a unique finger painting app only found on the iphone 4s. This was my first smart phone, and it is being used to generate seed images for this data set. It will continue to do so until it is no longer operable.
I am currently at 85,000 unique images.
The next phase in the series is to create a custom generation engine that uses solely my own images with which I can collaborate on new iterations.
These images below are iterations from the iphone 4s data set.
