About
I became interested in how other beings see the world after reading Jakob Uexkull’s essay, A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men. The text describes how for each different entity, an environment is created and understood by sensing. For example, a Tick can feel one thing, the presence of a specific biological compound in the air (a smell unique to its prey), and is programmed to ‘release’ its grip when it senses this compound, hopefully dropping itself onto its target for feeding. How does the world look to a Tick, with its sensing capabilities? The same idea can be followed through to any entity capable of sensing - and creates a curious notion that humans may not have a monopoly on what the world consists of - as we cannot possibly have every sensory organ possible.
As I continue to study how others see, my fascination with learning about the world through the eyes of non-humans grows.
In my work, I am translating views of earth-based natural landscapes using technologies generally reserved for surveillance, image recognition, and other types of machine vision, and hopefully give the viewer a unique position, one usually hidden behind layers of code, buried deep in the black box of neural networks and algorithms.
By using full spectrum cameras modified to allow all light spectrums, not just the light that the human eye can sense, we get an idea of how other eyes see light and color. By exploring alternative geometries of the vision plane - deconstructing the horizon and re-evaluating the hierarchy of detail - we may glimpse the world anew, which is not only observable and conceivable to us.
My work investigates perception, world-making and notions of the natural through artistic collaborations with synthetic intelligence and aim to excavate the known world in search of the sublime and presents novel visual constructions which reveal the intricacies and nuances of human perception. Whitcraft seeks not to replicate the natural world, but to supplement it by leveraging the infinite possibilities of light, alternative geometries and physical properties afforded by the digital realm.
In my latest solo exhibition, Looking at the Sky, I combine video, photography and custom software to explore abstractions of natural landscapes, sky and sea – revealing a unique mode of native technological creativity.
The video pieces and large scale colorfield works explore a new mode of working with landscape. The works propose a world that operates with different physics, impossible geometries and alternate geo- planetary arrangements. Working with parameters collaboratively created by myself and a General Adversarial Network (GAN), the results transfigure current physical principles to produce landscape photographs with spherically arranged horizons and mesmerizing video seascapes.
My work has been included in museums internationally such as Los Angeles MOCA, SFMOMA, LA Architecture + Design Museum, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Godwin-Ternbach Museum NY, Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia and gallery exhibitions including Themes+Projects, Minnesota Street Projects San Francisco, Subliminal Projects Los Angeles, Rietveld Art Academy Amsterdam, Netherlands, One-Off Moving Image Festival Copenhagen Denmark, Yami-ichi Brussels, Belgium, London West Gallery and the Leap Second Festival, Norway. He is currently working on his doctorate in Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and holds an MFA from University of California Los Angeles and a BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco.
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At Ars Longa, Vita Brevis San Francisco with La Douleur Exquise, 2022