Katy Molinaro

Artist Statement

This exhibition, on the crumbling bridge between the realms of digital existence and analog materiality, has two parts: "Inside Area X" and "Morning Routine." Taken together, they are different approaches to surveillance and subjectivity. 

Inspired by Area X from Jeff Vandermeer's eco sci-fi series The Southern Reach Trilogy (published in 2014), "The Lighthouse Watches Over Area X" interprets the novel through the lens of surveillance technologies that have colonized our landscape.

In The Southern Reach Trilogy, Area X was a once coastal town until it was overtaken by an unknown supernatural force and transformed into "pristine wilderness." Explorers are absorbed into a preternaturally calm landscape that seems to watch back, and many of the expeditions into Area X have ended tragically. The lighthouse, a prominent fixture of Area X, here represents the seemingly protected, one-way gaze of surveillance. It is covered in the parasitic plant cuscuta, which injects its own RNA into its host, lowering defenses much like the rhizomes of surveillance capitalism. 

At least that's one way to view it. 

"Morning Routine" is a yearlong project I began on January 1, 2022. I record the first moments of my day using a pair of spy glasses fitted with a tiny camera in the nose bridge, and from the footage I create a vignette for each morning recorded. 

The act of putting on the glasses has, in turn, become part of my routine. Powered by the force of habit, "Morning Routine" is an experiment in intimacy and subversion of surveillance capitalism's apparently protected, proprietary one-way gaze.  

"QR4" is a crocheted, scannable QR code. Making it felt like writing very slowly in a language I don't understand. The code directs to my website, where you can sign my guestbook.

As I was building the lighthouse, I felt that the emerging form had an uncanniness akin to AI-generated artwork. For further inspiration, I experimented with several programs, including Gaugan2, Nightcafe, and Wombo Dream. 

Pictured here are the results from the free app Wombo Dream after being fed a photo of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse in North Carolina, also pictured. 

IMAGE GALLERY

Click through to enlarge and view individual artworks from Katy's MFA thesis project.