The Algorithm is your God now

The Algorithm is your God now. There is no escape. I’ve been working on a new series of paintings called ‘The Algorithm’ I want to write a few paragraphs to give some idea of the concept behind these paintings. However, whilst I started with a coherent concept of where I was going with these artworks and what I wanted to say, it appears I may have wandered a little along the way. Something like ‘Welcome to the dystopia, where even your innermost thoughts are controlled by outside entities’ if we were to put like a tagline for a film.

The problem with trying to paint works of art that reflect the level of absurdity in the world we currently co-exist in is that I can’t keep up. We, the human race, are charging so eagerly towards various dystopian extremes that there isn’t a chance that I won’t eventually get overwhelmed. But then I suppose that is rather the point. As a result, the collection has become maybe slightly less coherent, it least in my opinion.

The Algorithm series

By my estimate (my head’s a little woolly today) there are currently six completed paintings in this series and one in the works. The Algorithm is your God now is a phrase in newspaper clippings that appears on the painting ‘The Algorithm’ and is where the concept began in my head as far as I remember. The phrase was born from a pub conversation, you can picture two lunatics visibly talking incoherent nonsense, although I don’t recall now the actual reason for the topic. However the next morning I found the phrase written on canvas in newspaper print.

The completed pictures are The Algoritmn, Reject, Stooky Bill, Inmate 021975, Thought Criminal and Aluhuttrager as seen in the gallery below.

I think it’s clear from the gallery that there is no coherent connection between these paintings in terms of style or colour palette, quite the opposite in fact. If in the future I have an exhibition around the concept I am sure it will come across as disjointed and disorientating, the ramblings of a man wearing a tin foil hat. Having said that, I think in terms of message and concept, it’s clear why I would group these paintings together.

The algorithm, a dislocated bust,  the algorithms of the digital age have almost complete control over every aspect of our lives. No one passes unscathed. Reject the outsider, unable to function in either the real world or the digital one to which so many of us have now migrated. Stooky Bill, an earlier rendition of the algorithms, but without Bill would we be here in this current state today, for God’s sake John, what have you done? I liked this one so much that I put the retro TV on a T-shirt. Inmate 021975, is pretty much a straight self-portrait after all I am trapped in this lunacy with the rest of you. Thought Criminal, asks, or maybe states, freedom of thought is an illusion. I will return to this idea, I am sure. And lastly Aluhuttrager, a musing on the role of conspiracy theorists both in terms of modern society and as a part of the algorithm.

The Future

The end is nigh, the storm crows gather, and all is bleak, or maybe this is the winter of our discontent and we are on the verge of great leaps forward, those sunlit uplands are just around the next corner, or after the next criminal murderous endeavour they have us slavishly cheering on…gleefully, willingly, like when the man in the old fashioned television studios holds up a placard telling you when to clap. My point is that I don’t know, and to some degree, I also don’t particularly care. My role in this is just as an observer. I see, I watch, I paint. I don’t mean any of these pictures to be partisan. As stated, I am a stranger on the outside and sometimes my paintings give some commentary on what I see.

I imagine at the end of that you’re no closer to understanding what is actually the message behind this series of paintings, but then maybe that is rather the point. If the algorithm was designed to empower you rather than to distract and disorientate you then maybe we wouldn’t find ourselves in this current state of affairs. Remember, The Algorithm is your God now.

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I will add to this series, at the moment I am painting a portrait around the concept of an NPC.