My work operates at the intersection of various disciplines, including art, graphic design, computer science, and engineering, among others. I am currently investigating growth processes and emergence in the built environment. Part of this investigation includes the correlation between urban growth and certain biomathematical processes, including Cellular Automata, Lindenmayer systems and Brownian motion. These processes are used to generate imagery, which I combine with more prescriptive elements in an evolving digital city. This digital city can be used as a model to compare with historical and extant built environments.
More broadly, I’m looking at historical influences in the American built environment from a materialist perspective. Having grown up in Detroit and the coal-mining region of the Upper Ohio Valley, I have always been interested in industrial relics and the macrostructures of the Rustbelt. This region offers a wide wealth of historical processes that emerged from the intersection of religion, Labor and Capitalism. I’m investigating the impact of these political and economic powers on landscapes by examining the patterns and structure of planned communities on the one hand, and the seemingly discursive growth of communities on the other. Biological and mathematical processes and designs have always been implicit in the conceptualization, formulation and realization of environmental projects, and they can be used to predict the growth or decay of many a built environment. Aesthetics, style, and periodization thus seem to presuppose these systems, and it is my intention to elucidate this phenomenon in my work.
