Stephanie Potter Corwin

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

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©2023

P.01
Murmurations
2018-2023

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.  


Duratrans with LED lightboxes; Video
48x64in ea.

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
Future : Potential
2023

Future : Potential :: Potential : Future is a data-driven project that explores environmental loss through a digital archive. 

Each installation is created from approximately 500 of the top served Google Image results for various endangered environments around the world: the Great Barrier Reef, the Dead Sea, the Patagonia Ice Shelf, among others. The results are aggregated into a single image which is then reprocessed using an algorithm that breaks down the composite image and rearranges its component pixels by hue. 

The resulting output is a contemporary landscape of pixels reminiscent of an autostereogram—almost as if to ask the viewer “what future can you see?”



Dye-sublimation on aluminum
Dimensions: 36x24in. 

P.03
autocomplete.us
2019

Informed by Google predictive text data captured from two major U.S. cities, individual search queries centered around the self are 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.04
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.05
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.06
One Week of Emails in July
2018

A tangible representation of an intangible media, One Week of Emails in July is a visualization of every email received between 07.09—07.15.2018. Meticulous details such as the correspondent, whether the email was sent or received, and time were collected and are represented via strokes, symbols, and color.

Ink on paper
5x7in.

P.07
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.08
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.09
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.

P.10
Turn Around
2012

Turn Around is a series of self-portraits that explore insecurities in selfhood from a particularly female perspective. The series was created in response to society's constant evaluation of outward appearances and the ways in which people can be dramatically affected by their clothing choices. Using familiar poses borrowed from fashion and advertising, assumptions are subverted when the viewer finds that in fact, the subject is actually facing away from the camera, poses given away by the backs of knees, the position of thumbs, or the backs of elbows.


Archival Inkjet Prints
26x32in.

Exhibitions:
MNEMONIC*, H Gallery, Ventura, California (US), 06.09.18—07.22.2018