Ongoing Research 2013- Present (Religious Revivalism and the China Sydnrome)
"I'm not afraid of machines," [Ray Bradbury] told Writer's Digest in 1976. "I don't think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we're fools."
I explore many subjects and then, somehow, they all come out in strange manners onto my canvases. These are some of the links relating to my new series on synthetic genomics, doctrine, and philosophy working titled Resurrection of the Tin Man. I started researching it mid 2011 and this page will grow, as did my Judy Garland page. I will be working on this series into 2013. Some people I asked to become characters in my paintings while others are a mix of individuals I know and those in the public narrative. These links support my new series in 2012 Gallery Work In Progress.Science, a lot of it, is reliant on the myth of its infalibility. This myth is perhaps the most dangerous myth of all. And science has many qualities of religion, doctrine, fervour and devotion as any religion, which begged the question about what a fictional messiah might be like.
A beautiful, talented much under-appreciated artist/singer and conceptual artist who supportively worked with me on using her image in my painting What Is This Thing Called Love? She will continue to appear in my paintings inspiring with her unsettling, independent and anarchically humorous spirit. It's a privilege to have worked with you in your final months. Punk won't be the same. Rest well Mistress Jennifer. Carl
What is this thing called Love? (Cole Porter 1929)
It's dated sure, but influential on my sense of visuals in these paintings....
Ed Finn has then really expanded on what is a seminal piece of thought work called What Algoriths Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing (The MIT Press, 2017). He is a profound thinker fo today. He touches on issues as a painter, especially as I'm not trying to recreate the past, rather imagine the future.
Finn writes about what I want to explore. He explores the 'corrosive impact of computational thinking on the human self' and suggests: “Now that language has become merely another tool, all concepts, ideas, images that artists and writers cannot paraphrase into computer-comprehensible language have lost their function and their potency.”(p57)"/ To me, this is a pressing theological question for all of us.
