Stephanie Potter Corwin

1. Murmurations
2. Simulacra
   
3. Future / Potential
4. autocomplete.us
5. Weather Patterns
6. Circadian Echoes
7. Year X (Emoji)
8. Mode Metonym
9. In[Between]Images
10. 39 Steps Until Disappearance
11. Turn Around
    
12. &otherData
13. One Week of Emails in July
    

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©2024

P.01
Murmurations (100,000 selfies)
2018-2022

Murmurations is a series of ‘collective self-portraits’: abstract visualizations inspired by flocking patterns found in nature. Comprised entirely of selfies, the series explores how social media is influencing behavior and the large-scale patterns that emerge in society despite an emphasis on individualism. The series introduces questions around the idea of self ‘tagging’ — both through language (hashtagging) and geolocation — and explores the compulsion humans feel to leave traces of themselves. 

The forced grouping of these images highlights their extreme similarities, supporting the idea that human populations will always move toward conformity, no matter how individualistic each unique member imagines themselves. Trying to be unique creates patterns of likeness, and observing these patterns may offer new ways of understanding ourselves.

An excerpt from Palimpsest Journal’s 2020 review: “As participants in social media, we are continuously aware of ourselves, particularly in relation to trends, the collective, and the digital. Yet this is not a critical display of humans’ infatuation with the digital world, rather, it spectates as you might a flock of starlings; an idea which takes on new poignancy in a time where social media has been integral to life in a pandemic.”

Murmurations #23: 10,000 selfies (with a pink wall in Los Angeles) was shortlisted for the 2020 Aesthetica Art Prize.  


48x64in Duratrans with LED lightboxes; 16:9 Video


Exhibitions:
So Close Yet So Far, LEVYdance, 460 Gough Street, San Francisco, CA, 03.14—04.25.2021
Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition 2020, York Art Gallery, York, UK, 03.13—07.18.2020 
The de Young Open 2020, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, 10.10.2020—01.03.2021  

Exhibition photographs by Stuart McSpadden

P.02
Simulacra (California)
2024

Simulacra (California) explores hypothetical memories of the future.

As AI-generated content increasingly fills the internet, it contaminates 'real' content, much like how our natural environment becomes polluted with intrusive elements. In response to this, AI-generated images of endangered animals from California were systematically deconstructed and reassembled based on the hues of their component pixels. Through this process, the artificiality is stripped away, revealing a more authentic image in its place.

Each image, entirely artificial, was generated using text prompts that included the taxon, common name, and habitat of these threatened species. Significant gaps in the AI models quickly became evident, particularly in generating nuanced subspecies. For instance, every generated butterfly shared similar coloring and pattern characteristics, despite being much more distinct in reality. This raises challenging questions about what will be remembered if these species disappear entirely.
These artificial images were then deconstructed and reassembled through a bespoke generative algorithm. A 55-minute companion video was also created, documenting both the initial generated images, as well as the first phase of pixel deconstruction. 

The result is an entirely unique arrangement of pixel forms—an abstract digital painting that stands as a reflection on the fragility of memory in the face of loss. 


Simulacra (California) — excerpt from longer video


Video: Digital (color), 53:40
Images:32x18in ea.

P.03
Future / Potential
2023

Future/Potential explores data’s role in shaping public perception and contributing to ‘climate blindness.’ Through a series of guerrilla-style posters displayed in public spaces and a companion website, the project questions the role of online information in obscuring critical environmental issues. Each poster challenges traditional narratives around climate change by highlighting how data itself can foster complacency rather than awareness.

Focusing on endangered environments like the Great Barrier Reef and the Patagonia Ice Fields, Future/Potential uses the top 500 Google Image search results for each location, merging them into a single composite image. An algorithm then deconstructs and rearranges each composite by hue, reassembling it as a continuous, linear landscape. The resulting visuals mimic autostereograms—3D illusion images—where familiar sights dissolve into abstract patterns, stripping these places of their immediacy and making them impossible to recognize.

This abstraction compels viewers to confront their own perceptions of environmental change and reframes climate awareness, inviting audiences to reconsider the visions of the future they may unconsciously construct from digital representations alone.



Wheatpaste posters; interactive website
Dimensions: 36x48in. 

P.04
autocomplete.us
2019

Informed by Google predictive search data captured from two major U.S. cities, individual search queries centered around the self ("Am I...", "Will I...", "Why can't I...", etc.) were silently broadcast back to the streets. Ranging from the banal, to the personal, to the existential, the questions reflect a subconscious yet familiar anxiety.

The project exploits our individual insecurities to reveal that beneath a surface of isolation exists the possibility of community, empathy, and acceptance—if we are willing to risk exposure and intimacy. 



Mobile LED Advertising Kiosks
12x36in.

Collaboration with Jeremy Mende

P.05
Weather Patterns
2024

Weather Patterns visualizes the volatility of climate change using data from extreme meteorological events.

In 2024, the hottest year ever recorded, the planet has witnessed a cascade of extreme weather—heatwaves, torrential rains, droughts, floods, wildfires, cold spells. Weather Patterns uses data from these events to analyze and reflect on their broader impact. 

This data drives the creation of chaotic attractor forms—dynamic mathematical systems that produce intricate, non-repeating patterns. Though these forms never repeat, they remain bound within specific limits, reflecting the complexity and unpredictability of our planet’s changing climate.

Newsprint; offset litho prints
23x30in.

P.06
Circadian Echoes
2018

Circadian Echoes is a series of abstract visualizations that considers the nature of digital photography through its relationship to documenting time. Each Echo is generated with colors recorded from photographs of the sky at particular locations on specific days.

Through a recursive process of data collection, sky colors are digitally photographed, cataloged, and then reduced into their most simplistic form: 5 - 7 representative pixels. These truncated images are then regenerated and re-expanded into new forms: abstract visualizations that act as a record of time, space, and medium. 

The series is an exercise in the exploitation of digital photography—manipulation of a documentarian tool by reducing the form into its most elemental technical parts. By preserving only a handful of pixels from the original photographs, Circadian Echoes takes the fundamental building blocks of digital photography and subverts them. The result is a visual record of the tensions between perception (of the self and/or of the camera) and reality.

Developed as part of the Regeneration Artist Residency in Oakland, California. 

Dye-sublimation on aluminum.
62x74in.
For purchasing inquiries, please email hi@stephaniepottercorwin.com

P.07
Year X (Emoji)
2018

An experiment in abstract data expression, Year X depicts one year’s worth of text message data between two people, stripped of everything except for emoji. By purposefully excluding reference to individual characters, the patterns of emoji use are exposed.




Offset Lithography
18x24in.

P.08
Mode Metonym
2014

Mode Metonym plays with the abstract notion of imprint and function. The collection of sculptural pieces invites performance—the objects appear to fit into or onto the body—and attempts to negotiate the need to physically wear these body adornments with the desire to engage and interact with the pieces. The resulting movements offer a response to the ever-shifting boundaries of both art and fashion.

Collaboration with Kate Langrish Smith



Performance; Archival inkjet prints; Projection 
Dimensions vary.

Exhibitions:
Transfashional, Rimini (IT), Kalmar (SE), Vienna (AS), Warsaw (PL), London (UK)

P.09
In[Between]Images
2013

In [Between] Images is an exploration of self-conscious female identity and the concept of the in-between through the performance of photography. The series of photographs, encountered through an installation where they are projected life-size, offer the viewer a liminal space in-between the image source and the projected image in which they are free to enter. The viewer is asked to consider his/herself in conjunction with the work.

Projection
9x14ft.

Exhibitions:
MA14*, Victoria House Basement, London, UK, 02.11.14—02.16.2014

P.10
39 Steps Until Disappearance
2013

A photographic experiment using sequential imagery and performance-for-the-camera in an attempt to harness affect. The performance explores feminism as a linear narrative by emphasizing movement through time and space.

The images refer to the act of undressing, and the casting off of the heavy coat signifies a rejection of the patriarchal constructs of femininity while subtly referencing the fashion industry’s perpetuation of this construct. After the coat is discarded, the viewer is left with the uncovered woman, but eventually even she disappears and only the coat remains.

Inkjet prints from medium format negatives.
5x5in.