Michael Slattery

Region: South

The raw material for this group of images comes from tourist videos posted on various web sites. From these accidental flowing images, I carefully select a discrete moment. Ultimately what draws me to a particular image is not the subject matter but their potential properties of value and texture. After deciding on the particular image, I then manipulate it in the computer to arrive at the composition, tonal balance, etc. that I will need as a starting point. I then rebuild the image and attempt to purge it of as much of the technology as possible while trying to hold onto the documentary quality of the original. The particular images are fixed by painstakingly constructing them with dots from a technical pen. The result should in a way be suspended between the digital realm and that of traditional works of art. The image starts out as something really quite modern: a digital video shot perhaps by a cell phone. The final image is something equally old fashioned: a collection of India Ink dots applied by hand on a paper that has been milled in France for hundreds of years.