Caratunk in late summer
Caratunk in late summer is the vibrant Ethereum genesis of Travess Smalley. Smalley’s creative process uniquely incorporates procedural scripts into Adobe Photoshop in order to generate unpredictable emergent details and compositions. This specific piece began as a photo taken by Smalley in the Caratunk Wildlife Preserve of Massachusetts and then altered through JavaScript code to recolor the image with various ranges of energetic RGB values. Smalley also includes one of the same fill scripts he uses in his iconic Tezos series called Pixel Rugs. This is where the distinctive "checkerboard" texture emerges. Additionally, the artwork was a part of the Softimage Poetics exhibition curated by Nora Khan.
Travess Smalley, 2023
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The work begins with a photograph, from a late summer walk in Caratunk Wildlife Preserve in Massachusetts. Through the pandemic, Smalley spent the majority of his studio time on the screen, focused on a drawing or a print. Caratunk is his 20 minute walk in nature, where he “starts to see all the symmetries and complexities of life,” his eyes adjusting to natural light. The final image suggests an in-between state of vision, a landscape that refuses the eye tidy resolution. Smalley’s practice draws on emergent patterns, generative tactics, and methods of repetition, to surface life cycles. Here, the original photograph is processed through actions in Photoshop, and through JavaScript, to make a composite of multiple distinct digitizings and recolorings of the image, in various ranges of vibrant chromatic RGB values. Layering these versions creates a new work, emergent, partially planned - but impossible to see before final render.