Projects
Algorithmic Landscapes, Augmenting Experience
Algorithmic Landscapes, Augmenting Experience
The exploration of expressing my practice of algorithmic patterns, landscape and memory in an augmented and immersive experience for the audience. Or at it's essence, what does it feel like to move inside the fractured, algorithmic memory of a landscape
What does it feel like to move inside the fractured, algorithmic memory of a landscape? My practice begins with photography taken during embodied experiences in mountain environments.These images act as both a record of presence and a prompt for memory, which I extend through mark-making and generative digital patterns created with code. In my printmaking, I use layering, colour blending and textural processes to reflect the way memories are fragmented, transformed and reassembled.
Explore
£5,000
Aims of the project
With this funding, I want to test how these ideas can move beyond the flat surface of print and into immersive space. I am curious about how immersive technologies such as VR, AR and projection mapping might enable audiences to experience the layering, fragmentation and abstraction that I currently work with in two dimensions.
How might an immersive environment re-embody the disjointed way memory and digital feeds return fragments of experience back to us? Can immersive tools create a sense of presence that is both embodied and unstable, mirroring the influence of social media algorithms?
The funding gives me time and resources to experiment directly with immersive tools such as Unity, VRheadsets and AR platforms. I plan to create simple prototypes using my photographs and generative digital patterns, testing how these fragments behave in space. By experimenting hands-on with immersive technology, I hope to learn how my existing visual language can be transformed into interactive, spatial environments.
Meet the artist
Nicholas Whimster
Lead Artist
he/him
Nick Whimster’s practice explores the embodied experience of being in mountain landscapes and how these environments are reinterpreted and mediated through social media. They interrogate how our memories are fragmented and cast into the digital sea of atomised moments, controlled by the currents of opaque algorithms which decide which of these fragments are served back to us via the stream of our social media feeds.
Photography forms the foundation of their work, serving both as a record of presence and a visual prompt. These images are extended through layers of mark-making and generative digital patterns created using code. These processes converge in their printmaking practice, where they experiment with techniques such as silkscreen and plate lithography. Through colour blends, textured layering, and mono printing, they create visually complex surfaces that reflect both the physical act and memory of being in the landscape, transformed and abstracted within digital space.
