Objects with Holiness

Dismantling an image and returning it to another form

This experimental work uses automatic generation in computer software. It refers to the Pop Art painting Seductive Girl (1996), which brought imagery sampled from comics into contemporary art.

I cropped the source painting and extracted the dots associated with Pop Art. These were converted to SVG, developed into drawings and mapped as coordinates for algorithmic form generation. I also automated fabrication with machines, aiming to minimise human decisions about form.

Behind this work is the thought that, as images of particular people or events become distant and indistinct, an individual image might take on a universal presence or a kind of “holiness”. I looked to approaches that blur the outlines of images copied from photographs, and those that turn photographs into monochrome images for transfer to screen prints.

Could abstract forms that do not readily appear to have been shaped by hand invite readings different from the source painting and evoke each viewer’s own experiences? The work asks whether dismantling an image and giving it form again through machines can impart a sense of “holiness”.

The forms were machined automatically following analysis, CAM, machining simulation and post-processing.