The disruption of job security among the working class by the advancement of AI has provoked speculation over which positions are most dispensable. In the anticipation of a paradigm shift, a foggy climate of caution, dread, and potential reward has provoked many to consider their standing in a volatile and divisive current that’s largely out of their power. Not only is the value of one’s labor under question – so is human relation in its intersection. Over two hundred retail employees of various primarily entry-level positions were asked “How soon, if ever, could your job be replaced by AI?” A sticker with their handwritten prediction is placed on the reverse of an inventory number sticker, with interspersed digital compositions detailing standout interactions and predictions with their corresponding positions. 

Usage directions: Pull the ‘PRODUCT NO.’ tab and gently twist to reveal the reverse side. To hang, slide the roll upward underneath the wall brace, letting the tab hang over. The roll can be gradually unraveled and hung through Product No. 500. The list cannot be rolled up without authorization once unraveled.

Distill: to extract the essence of something into a concentrated form

Distilled is a single minute of my unfiltered social media feed and account details, into an object, drawing, and photograph (left to right). One minute of time spent in social feed is often an experience unremembered, unrecorded, and highly personal. In order to distill a digital interface into a physical product, essential information is stripped and concentrated. In this action, the saturation of information in social media consumption is exposed. Blended and separated from the original imagery and context of an algorithm’s feed, the distortion between the digital and physical world displays the residue of my personal interests.

Object: Acrylic engraved with my account details and distillation parameters

Drawing: Every legible word from a one minute scroll, sorted alphabetically and hand drawn

Photograph: Long exposure of the one minute scroll

Elk antlers thrown and photographed airborne suggesting an absent body, taken at sites of tree stumps in my childhood neighborhood on Shanahan Ridge in Boulder, CO, chosen based on recency of cutting, proximity to my house, and significance in my memory of the neighborhood. Shanahan documents the gradual change to an environment that intersects naturally and artificially planted vegetation, urban and wildlife boundaries, and personal memory and growth as I’ve noticed a decline in deer and elk populations in my neighborhood while I outgrow it.

Photographs, physical pieces, and ink prints of all surfaces touched over the hundred-sixty-five step course to make avocado toast in my apartment. The photographs are placed in their subject matter’s approximate floor plan layout, and red dots indicate the number of times the subject was touched during the making of the avocado toast

“Ambidextrous” is a lenticular combination of two headshot self portraits that are completed when viewed from the extreme right and left angles. The title refers to my lifelong confusion over whether I can consider myself ambidextrous for drawing with my left hand while throwing with my right. It is also a reflection to how objects change representation as one ages; the type of pencils themselves becoming an icon for schooling as I’ve graduated to using drawing pencils, and as my practice itself has shifted through phases of drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Wooden walking cane with circular punctures ranging in size and depth creating a gradient effect. Drilled holes increase in size until the cane’s shaft is broken

I am exposed to reminders of ongoing existential devastation several times a day. What contains the destruction of lively communities is flattened into a fleeting moment of regularity within our digital social feeds. Strung between rally and advertisement, are there consequences of being hyper-aware? 

While it is necessary to understand that the grim is inseparable from reality, our overexposure leaves no room to process, understand, and realize complex situations beyond the temporary captivation of their morbid imagery. In the pursuit to rally support and awareness, we are desensitized; detached from that which is our responsibility to recover, and skeptical of our reach to contribute to or even form any legitimate solutions. Are we trapped in a perpetual cycle of observing tragedy alongside photos of our friends and a bespoken litany of advertisements?

We remain the consumer as our feed compounds into the walls around us. How much of our reality is shaped within the lost time propagated by social media? My video performance “doing my part” serves no answers to these questions, but illustrates how they blur together within our own digital habitat. In the performance, I use the Google extension made by an unverified organization that claims to donate unspecified cent fractions to unnamed charities for every browser tab opened in order to “do my part”. My tabs are “changing the world”. Unfortunately, their impact is limited by my computer’s processing capabilities, which give out altogether in the 15 minutes that degrade to a lagging loop of blackness.

Overlain on my donation tabs is a growing collection of instagram stories from my feed over the past few days, (one for each fully loaded tab) each calling social issues to action and digitally fermented out of comprehension. Most of these come from my sister, (the only profile whose story contributions to the video I had to limit) whose saturation in media outcry has birthed an expanding bearing of paranoia, anxiety, and skepticism over the past few years of her increasing media usage. Because of this I closely limit my social media intake, yet not enough to make sense of what I see.

Rabbit anatomy reconstructed through a human anthropological lens, comparing material relationships with cultural connotations

Broken Out is a self portrait through the interface of my wear to a 2019 Nike Tailwind ‘79 Pumice shoe (right foot). Retailing for $90, this pair of shoes was used relentlessly from their purchase in March 2020 to their approximate February 2022 retirement, lasting as a capsule, rather than shoe, to represent a period of time I consider among the most important in my life.