“The images are screenshots from Google Earth with basic color adjustments and cropping. I am collecting these new typologies as a means of conservation – as Google Earth improves its 3D models, its terrain, and its satellite imagery, these strange, surrealist depictions of our built environment and its relation to the natural landscape will disappear in favor of better illusionistic imagery. However, I think these strange mappings of the 2-dimensional and the 3-dimensional provide us with fabulous forms that are purely the result of algorithmic processes and not of human aesthetic decision making. They are artifacts worth preserving.”

About Clement Valla:

After working as an architect and designer in the USA, France, and China, Clement Valla began using computers and digital technologies to explore formal, mathematical, linguistic and social systems. He studied the intersection between art and computer programming at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Digital+Media MFA program, focusing on issues of individual and massively collaborative authorship, and generative algorithms applied to systems of reproduction. He is interested in processes that produce unfamiliar artifacts and skew reality. Valla works within systems, applying a ‘programmed brain’ that pushes problem-solving logic to irrational ends. He has collaborated with a number of artists and architects, and his work has been shown internationally. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.” Via