“Naturalizing the Digital”

“Sculpture’s prerogative is to confront us with the fact of our material, physical, bodily reality, making that fact available to thought and feeling — and making it sociable, an open secret shared with others in a common space.” Peter Schjeldahl

We modern humans are inclined to rationalize and digitize our environment. We delineate boundaries, build boxes, and design grids. Even our language can be viewed as a way of capturing ideas and feelings into discreet packages of information that are words.

Nature, on the other hand, has no such discreet boundaries. It is clearly Analogue. Its language consists of forces, processes, and materials. Discreet objects grow or crystallize from the energy of the universe.

Art can be viewed as the thing that reaches back from our rational constructions to bring meaning to our place in the natural world. Writers, poets, and musicians create analogue like flows of words to remind us of our true nature. Makers also reconfigure discreet materials into analogue expressions that resonate with our connection to the world.

I try to make sculptures that appear as if they grew from the interaction of natural forces and human intention.

The sculptures exploit the physicality of form and materials to confront the viewer with their connection to the natural world. They also encourage the viewer to experience preverbal feelings about growth processes and to consider ideas of origin and potential.  As our evolution, through the advent of digital and virtual technology grows, I find myself compelled to emphasize the importance of our natural and physical environments.

While I continue to explore and utilize digital processes, I do it with the express goal to underscore the physical and analogue characteristics of existence.

Francis Fox

12 September 2010