I’ve been making little virtual worlds for most of my life. This originated as an escape mechanism- I grew up playing video games as a means of escapism, now I appropriate those same tools to construct my own virtual spaces. The subject of this work began as an exploration of the dysfunction of perception. Mental illness runs in my family, and from a very young age I’ve been faced with questioning the reliability of perception and the black and white façade of objective reality that usually characterizes a child-like worldview. As an adult, I’m interested in the nature of the relationship between perception and reality. In particular, I’m interested in the subjective reality that results from faulty perception, and how perception can be deceived.

 

I construct 3D virtual spaces from an archive of imagery that is mentally curated both consciously and subconsciously. The result is often somewhat of a dream world- a landscape of the mind. In the content of these spaces, I’m interested in the qualities of perception, the filter of memory and fantasy, and where my experience and perspective of reality crosses over with that of the viewer. To that end, the computer becomes both an analogy and an extension for the mind- helping to express outwardly the subjective, internal realm. Although each image may express a different facet of this isolated space, all of my work is defined by the semi-futile pursuit of outputting an objective understanding of reality from the input of subjective perceptual systems. This output will always be subject to a multitude of unpredictable and unique biases, but the value of the work is in the pursuit of expression- expanding perception and invading the subjective reality sphere of the viewer.

 

For me, the work is still a sort of escapism. It’s about escaping into a fantasy of objectivity- reclaiming and reconstructing a long-lost worldview comfortable in its immunity to isolation and loneliness at its base levels. For the viewer, I hope the work is about finding where our spheres of reality can interfere or overlap.