Chimaera-like, the practice of artist duo LoVid transcends traditional systems of organisation and classification. The essential DNA of their work eludes fixed definition, seamlessly shifting between the digital and physical realms and capturing moments of flux where origins of form may vary.
Nowhere is this desire to record fleeting experience â repeating, reconfiguring and re-mixing them â more evident than in the works Stream Processing and Hedgerow Expansion.
We used the term âretrofuturismâ a lot, meaning we were interested in looking back to imagine other paths that technology could have taken, that were not influenced by efficiency, productivity or progress.
In Stream Processing, LoVid present digital flux in a tangible format through the hybridity of a work that exists as both an on-screen NFT and a limited edition print. Maximalist, yet deeply considered, the artwork draws from a vast array of personal and public references as layers of inputs are edited, remixed and re-inputted to create a piece of ever-changing data streams. Its variety of colour, shape and texture creates an emerging sense of movement as motifs unravel, patterns surface and disappear, and each new input subtly differs from the next. Through this inherent hybridity, LoVid bridge the gap between the virtual and the real and invite viewers to engage with the transient beauty of data as it transforms before their eyes.
The data pulled to create this work is extremely personal to the artists. Stream Processingâs source materials include stills pulled from archival video footage of LoVidâs own previous artworks, primarily created using analogue video instruments which date back throughout the history of LoVidâs studio practice. The footage is accessed and its signals reinterpreted into new works. Frames are pulled from the video to reveal intricate wave forms or tactile shapes, which are then zoomed into, moved around, cut up and reinterpreted using hand-crafted and digital processes of manipulation. A dense collage of analogue, digital and handmade visual materials then forms, which is further painted upon, sewn into and scanned so that new digital images can be reintroduced to the mix. Here, the archive is made tangible, not just as an object of technological history, but rather of the personal histories of the artists themselves.
Images: 1: ‘Stream Processing’, 2023. Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag. 2: Detail of ‘Stream Processing’, 2023. Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag. 3: Detail of ‘Stream Processing’, 2023. Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.Â
Hedgerow Expansion similarly comes to life through iterative practices that embrace repeated motifs and their physical manipulation. Acting as a modern reinterpretation of a tapestry, the work was initially inspired by a study that translated video footage into painting. Hedgerow Expansion’s composition was printed onto canvas using a dye sublimation process, before being further manipulated through sewing, with stitches tracking paths between the design’s shapes. Against a backdrop of linear motifs, swathes of pink fabric move against the grain in gestural flourishes, disrupting the composition like noise on an analogue video screen.Â
Here, the artists abstract the inherent glitches of the screen, not out of nostalgia for past technologies but to reflect on the recent moments those technologies inhabited. By reimagining their contexts and creative possibilities, the idea of the screen becomes tactile, material, and lucid, evolving from a mere reflective surface into a device where its hardware capabilities become the materially-specific instruments of creation.
Images: 1: ‘Hedgerow Expansion’, 2: ‘Hedgerow Expansion’, 3: Detail from ‘Hedgerow Expansion’. All images courtesy of the artist.
We export portions of previous recordings, cutting this, taking stills of that, recomposing them, maybe printing them out again, doing something else, painting, stitching, printing on fabric, all these different kinds of processes. Then we scan the emergent patterns back in and re-edit them all over again.
Tapestries, banners, and jacquard fabrics have a long history spanning handmade, mechanical, and algorithmic methods. Patented in 1804 by Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the jacquard loom was one of the earliest machines to incorporate automation and programmability. In Hedgerow Expansion, LoVid taps into this rich legacy, collapsing the history of computing into a single moment by referencing the historical significance of textile production alongside the materiality of recently obsolete analogue video and signalling technologies. In both works, the materiality of their form offers a new perspective on technology, emphasising its continuous flux rather than a purely forward-facing trajectory.
In his seminal work, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002), Brian Massumi describes time as continuous and interconnected, challenging traditional linear conceptions. Massumi writes, âTime is an asymmetrical, dynamic process that cannot be fully captured by the static, linear sequencing of measurable moments.â LoVidâs work captures this sensibility, embracing a more fluid and embodied perception of time. Stream Processing and Hedgerow Expansion both reflect a contemporary experience of palpable escalation and acceleration, which defines the aesthetic and existential narratives of our time. In these works, all time is experienced simultaneously; past personal memories are remastered and expanded into the present through texture, colour and form. Time is no longer static and linear but rather embodied and lived, referencing a distinctly human experience where memories and the present co-exist in a single instant.
Images: 1: ‘Double Bass’, 2: ‘Sines and Decoration’, 3: ‘Bubbly Wetware’. All images courtesy of the artist.
This collapsing of time into affective, pure experience imbues the work with a highly contemporary sense of direction and movement. Peter Osborneâs thesis in Anywhere or Not At All (2013) encapsulates this: âTo be contemporary is to exist in disjunctive relation to oneâs own time, a relation of timely untimeliness or, in the best cases, of untimely timeliness.â As soon as something becomes truly contemporary, it slips away, just out of reach. The intangibility of the present moment is perfectly captured in these works, which relinquish fixity, turning established patterns on their heads with fluid, disruptive momentum. Addressing the hypermobility of time in our age, they exist between the digital and the physical, presenting a radical form of hybridity. Much like the chimaera, evasive and fantastic, these works defy singular categorisation, embodying a transformative and transient aesthetic that reflects the disjunctive temporality of the contemporary.
Image: 1: In the studio at Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) at Alfred University.
INTERVIEW
Artist Duo LoVid on Playing with Noise
Unit Digital hear from the duo that make up LoVid, Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus, about the intricacies of their practice and how they collaborate together on a diverse range of projects.
Get in touch for additional information and to receive updates on future ‘Beyond the Code’ projects.
Biography
LoVid is a NY-based interdisciplinary artist duo working collaboratively since 2001. LoVidâs practice explores aspects of contemporary society where technology seeps into human culture and perception. Throughout their interdisciplinary projects over two decades, LoVid has maintained their signature visual and sonic aesthetic of colour, pattern, and texture density, with disruption and noise. LoVidâs work captures an intermixed world layered with virtual and physical, materials and simulations, connection and isolation.
LoVidâs process includes using home-made analogue synthesizers, hand-cranked code, and tangible materials to produce videos, textile works, performances, installations, and NFTs. LoVidâs work has been presented internationally and their work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum, The Museum of Moving Image, The Parrish Museum, Thoma Foundation, Watermill Center, Butler Institute of American Art, Heckscher Museum, and many private collections.