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. It’s true. 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. Across the human timeline, this development is both very new and very big.

There is almost always a digital aspect to my process, regardless of the series or project. My work is seldom purely digital or nondigital. I gather materials and inspiration everywhere – sound, trash, hardware stores, garage sales, and Twitter, for example. I capture digital images. I manipulate and print them.

The gathering of those materials, the materials themselves, the subject matter, and the techniques all mirror our cut-and-paste culture. Manipulated images and objects shift in size, context, meaning, and interpretation.

Those objects may then be exhibited not just on a wall but within the context of an event or larger installation. In this regard, the concepts behind the work often take on greater importance than the materials or any resulting objects.

I am also cross disciplinary: My background is in technology, and I maintain pursuits outside of art in business and technology.

The result of it all? Mounting evidence that how we define, create, and experience art is changing – while together we evolve in other areas of our networked, cut-and-paste lives.