synthesized poetry
My art practice focuses on the ethics of language — how language and society shape one another. I use computation to contend with the sheer vastness of text in the world. My work means to nudge language open, to allow a slant of insight into how it controls us, as in Jaques Derrida's observation that there is no language "alien to this history."
autocanon
Works contain text live-generated using Emily Dickinson's corpus as training data. Part of the Special Collections at Amherst College. Click to learn more.
2018, digital video, accelerated speed video
poetry machine outputting to thermal printer
2018, digital video
scrolls of synthetic poetry on thermal paper, blowing in the wind
hold you/mold you
Two lovers have an intimate, recursive conversation over text. User interaction and a rhyming algorithm moderate, obscure, and change the meaning these texts might convey. At the same time, the lovers' intentions may not have been pure from the beginning. This piece deals with the serpentine relationship that links intent, language, desire, and consent.
hold you/mold you, 2019, multi-channel video installation on mobile devices
photographs courtesy of Take Care
hold you/mold you, 2019-2021, browser-based interactive work
I'm interested in how human-made systems — like natural language and circuitry — can be intrinsically queer, and yet fail to accommodate queerness. I frame this paradox as the result of humankind's strange relationship to machine intelligence: we see our devices simultaneously as our lifeless servants and immortal progeny.
disarming loaded nonsense
From a 2020 computer-generated poem series.
passionless progenitors, digital image, 2020
Click for full series
other text
Voice/Spittoon, 2015, charcoal and drivel on Bristol, 29" X 23"
Untitled, 2018, JavaScript animation
loom & cipher
Starting in fall 2019, I began teaching a workshop that included a hands-on material history of computing, meant to instill a tactile understanding of electronic computation. For the purposes of this workshop, I created an analog binary decoder, inspired by the history of cryptography. I also used The Interlace Project's portable loom, to help illustrate the relationship between weaving, encryption, and computation.
I first held this workshop as part of my scholarship at Pumping Station: One, and have since been hired to hold it at other venues including Mana Contemporary and The Wing. So far, the workshop has filled up within a day or so of posting. I have also incorporated elements of the workshop into some of my university curricula.
analog binary decoder / cipher wheel
pseudo alphabets
These works explore systems of meaning, using computation to create the illusion of language, but ultimately frustrate the viewer with illegibilty.
slippery characters, 2020, live-generating p5.js animation
These "slippery characters" might reflect of langauge's attempts to describe, pigeonhole, categorize. OR, they might show language's inherent dynamism. They challenge the viewer's desire to make static meaning out of a fluid existence.
binary digits against a fold, 2019, collage, ink and laser engraving on paper, 9" X 12"
The binary digits series layers multiple levels of encoding. The double-ended fingers take the idea of a "binary digit" at its most literal meaning. These pieces explore and transgress binary notions of identity.
hair
Hair, like words, signifies in relation to the world around it — it has meaning depending on context, including deep ties to identity.
Morgan Green Shaves Her Head Backwards
Morgan Green Shaves Her Head Backwards, 2015, digital video
Selection at DOC NYC Film Festival 2015
R A P U N Z E L
Morgan Green and Andrew Bearnot, RAPUNZEL, 2021, scanned images from live-generating printer
R A P U N Z E L produces volumes of unique but mundane material — each printed segment different from the last. While a human hair grows smoothly from a follicle, these digital hairs register line-by-line, branded into thermal paper. Our algorithm produces images that are infinitely novel, but as hairs on a body, they appear the same in essence. Unfurling along a sensitive tape, they nevertheless seem to record something. Like a lock from a lover, this segment is yours to take home. You might revel in its particular kinks, its imperfections, perhaps the pierce of light entering its bend.
After observing hair under a microscope, we coded an abstraction that references hair’s subtle reach. Our program’s parameters produce boundless hairlike images. Matter, rather than mathematics, dictates that each has an end point. The system that designs these drawings uses Pierre Bézier’s formulas, layered with functions for tapering and shading. Bézier curves are ubiquitous in design and particularly typography. Our shaded curves too suggest calligraphic scribbles — clipped somewhere in the middle: segmented thoughts.
Artist talk with Morgan Green and Andrew Bearnot, moderated by Bel Sigado, at CURRENTS 826, 2021
