Map to the Treasure

Charlie Donaldson

Opening 05.10.16 6-8pm
Artist Talks 27.10.16 6-7pm

The way images exist and are consumed in the networked space of the Internet highlights a decisive turn away from traditional conceptions of the cultural significance of texts.

Preinternet visual culture utilised a linear narrative where images were published in newspapers, magazines, billboards, and TV programs at specific times. Now images are presented in a non-linear and interconnected space where they are named, marked and sorted. When we search or casually wander the Internet, our experience is running on a system of associations based off things you’ve purchased, videos you’ve watched, and articles you’ve read. However, these systems are rarely perfect, and often things can go awry, resulting magical extrapolations of what we seek to answer, purchase, or learn. The bizarre ability of these systems to create humorous, strange, and often dangerous associations through chance and data mining has quickly become a visual language in itself. Research into visual responses to this language is an emerging and important voice in contemporary art.

My practice is interested in the relationship between online systems of association and the role of magical thinking within our current cultural climate. Magical thinking within the rubric of psychology is the association between actions and images, which cannot be reasonably justified. This kind of faulty psychology is analogous to the current state of online associative systems designed to sell you things and to pander to your desires. The intersection of magical thinking and associative systems form the framework of my research manifested as collage- and installation-based practice. Magical thinking allows the connections formed in archival collage to become entangled in empirical histories and imagined narratives. The information we glean from images is underpinned by our engagement with images being increasingly defined by their ability to connect with each other.

My aim is to explore how I can take control of these associative systems to reveal something hidden about our world.