Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Olivia Aguiar

What a wonderful world it is, the world of software for computers

The Microsoft Word files and photo archives I ascertained from my grandfather's floppy disks were poorly re-formatted and low quality, but informed by Hito Steryl's theoretical engagements with the digital, these accidental abstractions struck me as interventions of his spirit rather than technological transgressions. In "Defense of the Poor Image", Steryl posits that the dubious quality of poor images makes visible the traces of all those who have interacted with them. For Steryl, the poor image is the ghost of an image's original form and a visual reminder of the image-sharers who've interacted with it. In an ethos of digital seancé, I appropriated my grandfather's "poor imagery" to create digital collages on Photoshop and then materialized the pixels by airbrushing successive translucent layers of paint. As the paint un-evenly dispersed amongst the warp and weft of the canvas, the sprayed coatings of colour began to mimic the ephemerality of form produced by pixelated digital images. I saw the painterly potential of these images and began to trace my grandfather's existence through mine by incorporating the material into visual works. Moving my grandfather's ghost through the cracks of his pixelated .png, I metamorphized his spirit into airbrushed paint.

“'March was an uneventful month in terms of social life. I remained–Mostly at home, studying, reading and ‘toying’ with my computers. These–have become an indispensable part of my life. What a wonderful world it is, the world of software for computers. I am amazed at the incredible possibilities that this new age of computerised information has to offer,' ('Aril 6 1998', Luís Aguiar, April 6 1998).”