#data points

Terry Winters' paintings for Point Cloud Pictures at Matthew Marks Gallery reference data collection methods and patterns from the natural world. The colorful and energetic works leave it up to the viewer to make their own associations.

From the gallery’s press release-

Winters’s work centers on abstraction as a catalyst for exploring the natural world. In his paintings, composition and color give new meaning to a wide range of technical references, which include advanced mathematical principles, musical notation, botany, and chemistry. In the artist’s own words: “I’m taking preexisting imagery and respecifying it through the painting process. Information is torqued with the objective of opening a fictive space or lyrical dimension.”

The title of the exhibition refers to the seven Point Cloud paintings on view, in which overlapping grids of ringed particles create complex, amorphous shapes. Borrowed from the field of three-dimensional modeling, a point cloud refers to a set of data points in space, often used to articulate objects or landscapes in digital models. “The forms can also suggest the collective behavior of animals, such as the murmuration of starlings and the schooling of fish,” Winters says. His paintings build an illusionistic sense of ever-expanding depth, as the varying size, shape, and angle of his painted data points lend a dynamism to his canvases. With the utmost attention to pigment, the paintings are built up in layers of oil, wax, and resin, further eliciting the energetic potential of their compositions.

Created through a parallel process, each painting on paper fills a large sheet from edge to edge. To make these works, Winters chose a paper size called a double elephant, which was first developed in 1826 to accommodate J.J. Audubon’s life-size depictions of birds. As Winters has described, “I’m interested in these givens, working within the parameters of that aspect ratio, and how that affects the building of the work.” Together, the works create a space that is both immediate and imaginary, what Winters has called a “vitalized geometry.”

Roads To Nowhere

For a 1,000 years, an all-out war and the fall of civilisation, the roads are in extremely good condition. Suppose that at that some point, we’ve found time to find a way to preserve roads from unduly harsh winters that used to be the norm so they’ll last more than a couple of months before opening up to the underground while battling climate change and recovering from its effects.

Which brings me to one of those moments when I had to pause the game and sat there, staring at my screen for a moment. Guerilla Games have said that they had to include climate change in their game world’s history to create a believable story, and while it is prevalent as one of the main drives for technological and AI advancement in the game’s lore, what really hit me was one innocuous data point in Devil’s Grief, underneath one of those roads leading into the great, watery, Snapmaw-infested unknown: data point #46, Sleeper.

It’s one of multiple personal logs found in the ruins of Devil’s Grief, and one I likely overlooked the first time playing since it is located underneath one of the bridges breaking off abruptly not far into the flooded area, but I tend to stay on top of the bridges unless I need ridge-wood (I don’t, mostly). The log’s creator, User 986546731, expresses their dissatisfaction at keeping a journal as a part of their therapy, and anger at what reads to me as a generational problem: the blame the younger generation puts on the older, for not taking enough responsibility for a problem they themselves have created out of ignorance or greed or both.

What stuck with me the most was the logger’s outburst in the middle of it: “I mean, sorry I had to watch half the world drown while the other half died of thirst or famine!” From what I gathered from various logs and mentions (the Wiki is suprisingly quiet on this, despite having info on Aloy’s height--1.69m, if you were wondering, wherever that information comes from--but it is also unsure whether she’s 18 or 19 as the game never makes it entirely clear, so it might be one of those cases where further information is simply lacking), the game puts the worst fallout of the climate crisis as well as its resolution sometime between the 30s and 40s, dubbing these events as the “Great Die-Off” and “Claw-Back”, respectively. In 2033, the Azores are submerged by the sea; in 2036, New Zealand suffers the same fate. In The Grave-Hoard, there is a data point called “Biosphere Degradation” to be found down in the USRC bunker, which states that the environmental damage caused by both the Faro plague and Operation: Enduring Victory has exceeded 2038 levels, implying that in 2038, environmental destruction had reached an heretofore unimaginable scale.

The full scope of these and undoubtedly more catastrophies can only be guessed from the data points available, but it is enough to get a general idea. As of today, these events aren’t just someone’s catastrophy fantasies incorporated into a game, they’re likely. They’re real.  And we all know they’re within arm’s reach, as their first heralds are already here.

I’m privileged enough to live in an area of the world that won’t be submerged by rising sea levels. We won’t burn, and if we do, leftover WW2 ammunition will be likely a bigger challenge than combatting the flames in the first place. We’ll likely experience general drought as our water reserves are dwindling already, but this country is rich enough so we’ll get by. And as it is the way of things, we’ve been burning enough coal for decades that we are partly to blame for it happening in the first place. So, this text was for me, and people like me. The ones who will just be watching, who won’t have to fight for their survival while simultaneously being responsible, and therefore should use our resources to mitigate what’s coming.

Helsinki city hall has a new lobby and I made this animation to its 11m (36ft) long and 2m (2.5ft) tall screen.

Each space of the animation portray different data points of the people of Helsinki. First room tells about native languages, second room tells what people study, third room is about what age groups there are and last space is about how the people of Helsinki move in the city.