Brandon A. Dalmer (b.1984) recently completed their MFA at Concordia University. Their work explores the way images are generated and the tenuous understanding we have with expanding technologies. Through the use of fabrication, generative processes and robotic assistance his painting practice aims to contextualize and elucidate the often unseen processes underlying our everyday lives. This also acts as a method of archive. His practice is open-source allowing others to expand upon it, granting a form of technological undeath. 

Dalmer has participated in a number of residencies and exhibitions across Canada and internationally. He currently lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal.

Digital information can be endlessly copied, transferred and manipulated with little to no material cost and at a faster rate than the analog. What is lost through this process? What effect does the artificial have on our perception over time? As users of digital space, we must have an ongoing ability to decipher the hidden sourcery guiding our interactions with it.

My work seeks to convert the digital medium back to a physical one. Through this action we can begin to humanize these invisible systems. A reclamation of data can be achieved, instilling life to the artificial facsimile.

Within a system-based practice, I develop code to procedurally generate or manipulate digital compositions. These are then freed from their undead digital forms through machine processes associated with rapid prototyping. By creating many of the systems and machines I use in the production of my work, I’m able to form a personal relationship with these technologies. Understanding the labor required to produce these images. The painterly aesthetic varies, from exaggerated brush strokes, to a flatness of the surface intended to simulate the black mirror. Vibrant in both color and application of paint—they convey both a synthetic and uniquely human aesthetic. This means of analog production seeks collaboration with the machine rather than replacement, contrasting the potential future of fully-automated manufacturing to come. Without the ability to perceive the invisible structures controlling our interactions with digital culture we leave ourselves vulnerable to manipulation. At the very least we are effectively locked out of a crucial aspect of the world.