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    In Miniature Models, Thomas Doyle Envisions an Unsettling Future of Technological Takeover

    “Clickthrough rate” (2024), mixed media, 24 x 15 x 15 centimeters. All images courtesy of Thomas Doyle, shared with permission

    In Miniature Models, Thomas Doyle Envisions an Unsettling Future of Technological Takeover

    July 29, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    If we were to travel 500 years into the future, what would the monuments decorating public parks and town squares commemorate? Thomas Doyle takes us on an unnerving journey to imagine the culture we might encounter should our endless fascination with technology continue.

    The New York-based artist (previously) toys with perception as he sculpts miniature works at 1:43 scale and smaller. His new dystopian series, Clear History, invokes classical Greek and Roman sculpture, although the venerated figures appear more as a warning than an ideal. Sharp rays pierce through a woman’s head in “Clickthrough rate,” for example, while the hunched protagonist of “Opt in” demonstrates the neck-cranking posture many of us know all too well.

    “Infinite scroll” (2024), mixed media, 22 x 13.8 x 13.8 centimeters

    Interested in the long tail of culture, Doyle frequently looks to the past to better understand the consequences of our present. “I’m fascinated by the way we are hurtling toward what seems to be a new way of being human, leaping without looking, hoping for the best,” he says.

    In each of the mixed-media scenes, tiny figures peer up at or sit near the weathered statues as they consider a world that’s come and gone. “The trappings of past cultures are all around us, morphed and made nearly unrecognizable over centuries,” the artist adds. “I’ve tried to trace the ways in which today’s technologies will reverberate over time. What will grow from the seeds we plant today? What becomes a venerated symbol? What serves as a cautionary myth?”

    Doyle currently has a few models on view at the Ukrainian National Museum in Chicago, and he very generously shares glimpses behind the scenes on Instagram.

    “Acceptance criteria” (2024), mixed media, 21 x 15 x 15 centimeters

    “Opt in” (2024), mixed media, 20 x 20 x 20 centimeters

    “Switch profile” (2024), mixed media, 20 x 12.5 x 12.5 centimeters

    “Show hidden” (2024), mixed media, 28 x 30 x 30 centimeters

    “Session timeout” (2024), mixed media, 25 x 14.5 x 14.5 centimeters

    “Bad gateway” (2024), mixed media, 20 x 17.5 x 17.5 centimeters

    “Use case” (2024), mixed media, 20 x 14 x 14 centimeters

    “Temporary redirect” (2024), mixed media, 21 x 26 x 26 centimeters

    “We value your privacy” (2024), mixed media, 28 x 17.5 x 17.5 centimeters

    “Rollback” (2024), mixed media / 20 x 16 x 16 centimeters

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    ‘Inside Information’ Cutaway Diagrams by Dorothy Dig Into the Makings of Pop Culture Icons

    “Inside Information: Boombox.” All images © Dorothy, shared with permission

    ‘Inside Information’ Cutaway Diagrams by Dorothy Dig Into the Makings of Pop Culture Icons

    June 16, 2025

    ArtDesignHistoryIllustration

    Kate Mothes

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    Taking diagrams to a new level, U.K.-based studio collective Dorothy creates prints that celebrate information—charts, maps, alphabets, color wheels, and blueprints. The team has also plunged into the world of cutaway drawings, which are popular for visualizing otherwise opaque, multilayered objects in the manufacturing world.

    Cutaway diagrams have actually been around for centuries, with the form originating in the 15th-century notebooks of Italian Renaissance engineer Mariano “Taccola” de Jacopo. Dorothy’s twist on the 3D graphic form, a series titled Inside Information, is a celebration of pop culture and modern technology, from Apple computers and sneakers to boomboxes and theremins.

    Detail of “Inside Information: Boombox”

    Each object teems with figures and motifs that have been instrumental in the item’s history and culture, like trailblazing rappers and hip-hop artists who wander stereo box innards in “Inside Information: Boombox” as if it’s a building. The same goes for the Moog, which highlights flashpoints in its development and musical icons like David Byrne and Led Zeppelin who have contributed to its popularity—along with its namesake, of course, Robert Moog.

    Prints are available for purchase on Dorothy’s website, and you can follow updates and releases on Instagram.

    Detail of “Inside Information: Boombox”

    Detail of “Inside Information: Boombox”

    “Inside Information: Claravox – Special Edition for Moog Music”

    Detail of “Inside Information: Claravox – Special Edition for Moog Music”

    Detail of “Inside Information: Claravox – Special Edition for Moog Music”

    Detail of “Inside Information: Claravox – Special Edition for Moog Music”

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    Explore an Incredible 108-Gigapixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer’s Most Famous Painting

    All images courtesy of Hirox, Tuur, and The Mauritshuis

    Explore an Incredible 108-Gigapixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer’s Most Famous Painting

    May 5, 2025

    ArtPhotographyScience

    Kate Mothes

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    One of the inimitable joys of visiting an art museum is being able to view paintings up close—to see their textures, frames, and the way the surface interacts with the light. But even if you had the opportunity to step past security wires and get within inches of an original canvas, you’d still never be able to see the work quite like the new, 108-gigapixel scan of Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (1665).

    The Mauritshuis has documented its most famous acquisition in unprecedented detail with the help of lens company Hirox, which has produced a video microscope capable of capturing the tiniest speck of paint with astonishing clarity. The outfit was also involved in an earlier reproduction of the same painting, creating an image composed of 10 billion pixels.

    This high-tech collaboration brings a 17th-century masterpiece to life with an interactive site inviting visitors to examine every micro detail. The new image is more than ten times as large as its predecessor—108 gigapixels translates to 108 billion pixels. A standard computer screen ranges from around four to six million pixels in its entirety. As Kottke notes, the resolution is very high, too, at 1.3 microns per pixel. (A millimeter is 1,000 microns.)

    Hirox, in tandem with a company called Tuur, produced a beautiful video and virtual tour. A three-dimensional tool for exploring the topography of the surface highlights Vermeer’s mastery of light, like reflections in the sitter’s eyes, the folds of her head scarf, and the minimal dabs of white paint on the titular pearl.

    This virtual exploration offers art historians and enthusiasts alike a chance to experience “Girl with a Peal Earring” like never before, regardless of where you are. But if you’re in The Hague, it’s also on view in the permanent collection of The Mauritshuis.

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    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    “Overlook” (2025). gouache, acrylic, ink, and 42 vintage postcards
    on panel, 32 x 40 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, shared with permission

    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    March 19, 2025

    ArtClimate

    Kate Mothes

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    The first known postcard printed as a souvenir can be traced to Vienna in 1871, followed by commemorative cards for famous events like the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 and the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. It wasn’t long before a fashion for picture postcards took the U.S. by storm throughout the first half of the 20th century.

    For David Opdyke, the iconic correspondences form the groundwork for an artistic practice examining capitalism, globalization, consumerism, and our fraught and increasingly disconnected relationship with the environment. Occasionally darkly humorous yet steeped in a sense of foreboding, his uncanny scenes suggest what kind of world we might live in we do nothing to stem the mounting climate crisis.

    “Charismatic Megafauna” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    Opdyke summons idyllic coastlines, national parks, government monuments, wildlife, and civic infrastructure to weave “fractured yet cohesive topographies,” says Cristin Tierney Gallery, which is presenting the artist’s current solo exhibition, Waiting for the Future.

    For nearly a decade, Opdyke has invoked the nostalgia of landscape postcards to interrogate the climate emergency within the context of American politics and geographies. “Through these carefully altered compositions, Opdyke merges the past and the future, presenting both urgent and inevitable visions of environmental upheaval,” the gallery says.

    The artist often uses antique cards that he purchases on eBay, painting scenes of environmental disasters or discordances between nature and architecture. Alternating between cartoons and life-like portrayals of trees, animals, fires, and structures, his compositions range from single cards to wall-spanning assemblages, his gouache-painted details spreading from frame to frame.

    In “Overlook,” for example, giant tentacles destroy bridges, rising sea water threatens cities, and huge fires rage in institutional buildings. A dome encloses a metropolis, a rocket named Mars 2 heads for a new home in the solar system, and an airplane banner advertises “Technology Will Save Us” in a bleak yet not unimaginable reality fueled by techno-utopianism.

    “Enough of Nature” (2025), gouache, acrylic, and ink on 500 vintage postcards, 104 x 168 inches

    In his large-scale “Enough of Nature,” Opdyke transforms natural landscapes into encampment sites for those displaced from their homes, and portions of the overall composition appear to dislodge from the main grid as if floating away.

    Caught tenuously between outmoded industrial practices, shifting societal value systems, and a rapidly evolving climate crisis, Opdyke’s pieces point to once-idealized symbols of American progress to stress the dangers of ignoring our own impact on the environment.

    Waiting for the Future underscores the precariousness of complacency, a “cautionary tale,” the gallery says, laying bare the fragility of our constructed environment.

    The show continues through April 26 in New York City. Find more on the artist’s website.

    Detail of “Overlook”

    “Main Stage” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Unity, Industry, Victory” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Insurrection” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “Fourth Wall” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “If you can’t say something nice” (2024), gouache and ink on two vintage postcards, 4 x 12 1/2 inches

    “Breaking In” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    Detail of “Enough of Nature”

    “First Contact” (2023), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

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    Loosely Woven Burlap Mimics Digital Pixels in Jennifer J. Lee’s Photorealistic Paintings

    Detail of “Lee Jeans.” All images courtesy of the artist and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York, shared with permission

    Loosely Woven Burlap Mimics Digital Pixels in Jennifer J. Lee’s Photorealistic Paintings

    February 26, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    On the loosely woven surface of jute burlap, Brooklyn-based artist Jennifer J. Lee paints photorealistic scenes that explore the saturation of images in contemporary experience. The fabric’s gridded structure conjures associations with pixellated screens, playing with the relationship between digital and analog representations of everyday objects.

    Recent paintings, nearly a dozen of which were on view in the artist’s solo exhibition at Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, highlight a personal glimpse of nostalgia, a fascination with the act of looking, and seemingly banal imagery transfigured into symbolic references and objects.

    “Acid Jeans” (2024), oil on jute, 16 × 12 inches

    Lee’s paintings starkly contrast the instant gratification of scrolling through endless images, challenging the speed at which we consume information. She describes her process as a form of “waking meditation and sustained observation,” translating digital pixels into hand-painted brushstrokes and stretching fabric to simulate screens.

    The artist’s technical ability to translate finite details onto a relatively rugged surface speaks to the time and attention required to produce a single painting. Small in scale, her pieces reveal surprising interactions between the objects’ surfaces and the woven jute.

    Denim, for example, sports its own signature weave, which in works like “Acid Jeans” seems to somehow exist in both harmony and opposition with the burlap. Portraying a smooth object in “Security Mirror” presents the challenge of making glass appear polished while nodding to the graininess we associate with CCTV footage. And a bunch of footprints in sand suggest another kind of graininess altogether, the shadows and subtle colors of which seem to vibrate or flicker thanks to the low-thread-count jute weave.

    Lee’s recent paintings harken back to Y2K, an era on the cusp of immense technological and social change as personal computers, mobile phones, and the internet became more widely available, spawning the social media platforms we still use today—albeit profoundly changed since they first emerged.

    Find more on Instagram.

    “Security Mirror” (2024), oil on jute, 13 × 13 inches

    “Pizza” (2024), oil on jute, 12 × 20 inches

    “Beach” (2024), oil on jute, 12 × 21 inches

    “Tennis” (2024), oil on jute, 22 × 15 inches

    Detail of “Pizza”

    “Lee Jeans” (2024), oil on jute, 15 × 13 inches

    Detail of “Tennis”

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    Splashes of Stainless Steel by Zheng Lu Embrace Philosophy, History, and Technology

    “Undercurrent” (2023), stainless steel, 340 x 410 x 630 centimeters. All images courtesy of Zheng Lu and Galerie Sept, shared with permission

    Splashes of Stainless Steel by Zheng Lu Embrace Philosophy, History, and Technology

    February 20, 2025

    ArtNature

    Kate Mothes

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    Composed of highly polished stainless steel, the sculptures of Zheng Lu (previously) appear suspended in space and time. Whether secured atop a pedestal, installed in a public park, or hanging in midair, each piece strikes a fine balance between motion and stillness and fluidity and fixedness.

    The Beijing-based artist is deeply influenced by traditional Chinese philosophy and calligraphy. The energy, or qi, that courses through the universe shapes his work and is known to facilitate health, stability, and harmony in all aspects of life. Thousands of Chinese characters borrowed from historic texts additionally coat many of his sculptures, calling upon the past as a way to interface with the present.

    “Undercurrent,” stainless steel

    Lu is also increasingly interested in the burgeoning relationship between human artistry and artificial intelligence. “The advancement of technology will inevitably blur the boundaries between tools and creators, but the essence of creation remains rooted in human nature,” the artist tells Colossal. Viewed as a tool rather than a stand-in for human creativity, he is interested in how machine learning prompts us to more carefully consider authorship.

    Through a creative approach that alternates between human and machine, Lu likens his process to “a relay race, with the artwork itself as the baton.” He continues:

    I pass the baton to the computer, and it passes it back to me, each of us shaping the piece in turn. The final outcome is not entirely predictable. The existence of the world is defined by balance, and none of us can escape this principle. Hence, I embrace this method both in my life and work, where the process of creation is akin to the growth of life.

    Lu is represented by Galerie Sept, and you can find more on the artist’s website.

    Installation view of “Undercurrent”

    “Water in Dripping Vortex,” stainless steel

    “Whatever Journey it Takes” (2024), stainless steel, 560 x 540 x 240 centimeters

    “Water in Dripping Circulation,” stainless steel

    “Colosseum Fantasy” (2024), stainless steel, 120 x 100 x 242 centimeters

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    Beep Boop! Computers and Game Consoles Blink to Life in Love Hultén’s Retrofuturist Tech

    “R-KAID-R”

    Beep Boop! Computers and Game Consoles Blink to Life in Love Hultén’s Retrofuturist Tech

    February 14, 2025

    ArtDesignMusic

    Kate Mothes

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    From throwback pixelated video games to science fiction-inspired computer consoles, Love Hultén’s playful sculptures (previously) harken back to the birth of digital.

    Based in Gothenburg, Sweden, the artist’s explorations of video games, electronic music, and retrofuturist aesthetics continue to shape playful pieces like “R-KAID-R,” a mobile video game complete with a toggle, all of which can be carried like a briefcase.

    “The Singer”

    One recent work, “The Future Fan Stage” takes a humorous approach to a fantastical fusion of live performance, science, and computers. Commissioned for Gothenburg’s Way Out West, the screen doubles as a fully functional stage that played live recordings of the headliners “for what might be the largest yet smallest crowd in history: sperm and eggs getting ‘ready to rumble’ in a laboratory,” Hultén says.

    The artist draws on controversies surrounding in vitro fertilization (IVF) that have reached a fever pitch during the past few years. Taking an optimistic approach to science and modern medicine, Hultén references studies demonstrating that music may improve fertilization during the IVF process.

    Hultén’s work will be on view in Liljevalchs’ spring salon Vårsalong 2025, which opens on February 14 in Stockholm. Find more on the artist’s website.

    “Leto”

    “The Future Fan Stage”

    Detail of “The Future Fan Stage”

    “Y-17”

    Detail of “Y-17”

    “R-KAID-R”

    Detail of “Leto”

    “The Singer”

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    Marilou Schultz Weaves Computer Processor Patterns in Traditional Navajo Tapestries

    “Replica of a Chip” (1994), wool mounted on wood, 120 × 146.1 centimeters. Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. Image courtesy of American Indian Science and Engineering Society, shared with permission

    Marilou Schultz Weaves Computer Processor Patterns in Traditional Navajo Tapestries

    November 14, 2024

    ArtCraftDesignHistory

    Kate Mothes

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    What does Intel’s Pentium computer chip have in common with Navajo textiles? More than you might think.

    For artist Marilou Schultz, the ancestral practice of weaving melds with an unexpected contemporary source of inspiration. Merging analog loom methods with the patterns found on computer processor cores, Schultz entwines the histories of the Navajo people and modern technology.

    Detail of Intel Pentium core processor die

    In the late 17th century, Spanish colonists introduced a breed of sheep called the Iberian Churro to the American Southwest. The Diné—known also as Navajo—who had lived in the Four Corners region for hundreds of years, embraced shepherding and wool production, eventually developing a unique breed still managed today, the Navajo-Churro.

    Along with an aptitude for raising sheep, Diné weaving traditions flourished. Anthropologists surmise that the craft was adopted from the neighboring Puebloans sometime in the 12th or 13th centuries. As time passed, Navajo styles and techniques evolved, rising to popularity first among Plains Indian tribes and then, in the 19th century, with Europeans and non-Native tourists who sought out blankets and rugs for their remarkable craftsmanship and geometric patterns.

    Schultz, a mathematician and teacher in addition to her studio practice, was commissioned by Intel in 1994 to make “Replica of a Chip” as a gift to the American Indian Science & Engineering Society, an organization still active today that focuses on advancing Indigenous people in STEM. As computer historian Ken Schirriff details in a thorough blog post about the piece—especially its highly accurate layout—the work highlights the alluring patterns of a trailblazing piece of technology.

    Detail of “Replica of a Chip”

    The first Pentium processor was released in 1993. About the size of a fingernail, the die—the material on which the processor is fabricated—contains more than three million transistors. These microscopic switches control the flow of electricity to process data. Today, some high-powered chips contain billions of transistors.

    Schultz faithfully transferred the die pattern to a tapestry, employing delicate loom techniques and working from a photograph of the chip. Unlike traditional Navajo textiles, the geometries in “Replica of a Chip” are far from symmetrical.

    She used yarn pigmented with plant dyes, and the cream-colored regions are the natural shade of Navajo-Churro wool. Schultz told Schirriff that the weaving process was slow and deliberate as she referenced the image, completing about one to one-and-a-half inches per day. The painstaking and methodical process of sending warp through weft creates a beautiful tension between the instantaneous results we associate with digital tools today.

    Intel Pentium processors

    “Replica of a Chip” was the first in a series of weavings Schultz created based on computer circuits, including one known as the Fairchild 9040. While not as common as the Pentium, the Fairchild company is notable for its employment of Navajo workers in its operation in Shiprock, New Mexico—within the Navajo Nation—in the 1960s and 1970s.

    Part of a government initiative to try to improve the economic conditions of life on the reservation, Fairchild was incentivized to open a manufacturing center in Shiprock. “The project started in 1965 with 50 Navajo workers in the Shiprock Community Center manufacturing transistors, rapidly increasing to 366 Navajo workers,” Schirriff says. Eventually, the company “employed 1,200 workers, and all but 24 were Navajo, making Fairchild the nation’s largest non-government employer of American Indians.”

    In 1975, the Fairchild-Navajo partnership took a dramatic turn that spelled its demise. With the semiconductor industry suffering from the crippling U.S. recession at the time, Fairchild laid off 140 Navajo employees in Shiprock, which today still has a population of only a little more than 8,000 residents. The layoffs were a blow to the community. A group of 20 locals, armed with rifles, responded by occupying the plant for a week.

    While the episode eventually ended peaceably, Fairchild decided to shutter entirely and move its operation overseas, further compromising trust in corporate interests on Navajo land.

    Women’s roles in manufacturing and assembling electronics are often under-recognized. Schultz taps into ideas around gendered labor, visibility, and the slippery notion of “progress.” Through the lens of Navajo history and craft, she addresses paradigm shifts in technology, economics, and social change through the language of fiber.

    You can see “Replica of a Chip” in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, which continues through March 2, 2025.

    Detail of “”Replica of a Chip”

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