New Media Artist Matthew White | Statement

Technology. Connection. Compulsion. These are themes I explore as a multidisciplinary and new media artist.

The film director Darren Aronofsky once mentioned how central the concept of cut-and-paste is to the modern psyche. Day in and day out – in texts, emails, and on the web – we cut or copy pieces from here and paste them there. We move images, words, files, and various bits of data in and out of native contexts. In the human timeline, this acceleration is both compulsory and problematic.

I gather, manipulate, and remix materials and inspiration from everywhere: Sound, digital images, trash, hardware stores, garage sales, and social media.

Not being limited to more traditional materials often yields higher-tech pieces where the process driving the work takes on greater importance than the resulting object. Yet, many works are decidedly low-tech.

That process and the works along the path can also be expanded. More recent efforts embed new media technologies within the process itself, yielding multi-faceted works that require presentation in different ways and environments.

I also live a cross disciplinary existence: My background is in technology, and I maintain pursuits outside of the arts. The result of it all? Mounting evidence that how we define, generate, and experience art is changing while we evolve in other areas of our networked, cut-and-paste lives.