Truth Project

TRUTH LOST AT SEA (MIRROR VERSION) afloat in Martha’s Vineyard Sound (Composited image)

TRUTH LOST AT SEA is the largest of the TRUTH PROJECT sculptures in the series. It is to be fabricated from aluminum with an irregular hole pattern on the surface to let the internal LED light be seen from a distance and to allow wind to pass through the sculpture to reduce wind load. A companion vessel, likely a small tugboat, will accompany the sculpture around and position it into each of the locations it appears in.

TRUTH PROJECT is a series of artistic explorations into the language associated with the word “truth”. The artworks range from the nano scale (actually carving the word on the point of a pin at 2microns) to the large-scale water-going artwork TRUTH LOST AT SEA, which will have an east coast multi-city tour of waterways and highways as an alternative venue for public exhibition.

“The path to visually present a complex concept like truth is a process.  I began the project as an artistic response to the mythical idea of “alternative facts” .

TRUTH LOST AT SEA afloat on Manhattan’s EAST RIVER [AI moving image]

This is the ONLY FUZZY TRUTH I know of.

My sculpture, FUZZY TRUTH is intended as a satirical and provocative artwork. My goal is to illustrate how Truth, as a foundational concept of democracy, has increasingly lost its legitimacy via bot-driven algorithms that strive for viral exposure.  Welcome to disinfoworld.

On October 17, 2005, Stephen Colbert introduced the term “truthiness” on the premiere of The Colbert Report, defining it as the preference for ideas one wishes to be true over established facts.

In today’s interconnected world, technology has accelerated a destructive tendency to spread disinformation,<–more–>prioritizing profitability of viewership over facts. Orwell’s 1948 book 1984 foresaw this fragility, and in the present time, amid constant lies and “alternative facts,” the battle for discernible truth has evolved beyond human capacity, self-generated instead on networked computers to offer the seemingly real.

Since the 45th President’s term, the manipulation of what represents the “Truth” has become victim to a twenty-first century version of an Orwellian reality, highlighting the vulnerability and complexity of  observable proof.

Motivated by this massive distortion, I began TRUTH PROJECT, exploring colloquial expressions of truth. And while I use computer algorithms to ideate and create imagery as an artist, for TRUTH PROJECT I fabricate objects and drawings– both large and small– to exist firmly in a non-computer reality. WHIPS

As noted by historian Yuval Noah Hariri, the critical nature of “intersubjective reality” (a shared understanding of the world that is created through communication, cultural norms, and social agreement) is deeply at risk. Hariri warns that without shared realities there is a great potential for catastrophic outcomes.

I travel a lot .  I bring one of many of my small sculptures of the word “TRUTH” with me. It is a cast resin TRUTH, and I often give it to people we meet along the way so I can get an image of them holding onto a truth. Waitresses in Cong, Republic of Ireland, Family members from Vienna Virginia or Yorkville California, artists in Spain, friends and colleagues in Manhattan, A guard at the new Lightroom immersive gallery in London, hoteliers in Sicily, the list continues…

Travels with Truth    Ponta Delgada, Açores, Portugal

NEXT TRAVELING TRUTH

“A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and

may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.