The Root Four Series

​The Root Four Series

The multi-step process for creating the Root Four Series starts with the digitization of black and white, medium-format negatives taken by my father in the 1950s. The images are imported into Photoshop and merged with digital, color photographs I have taken while traveling, which, for example, include close ups of Buddhist temple architecture, Mayan and Incan stone carvings from treks in the Himalayan and Andean Mountains, and peeling paint on city walls in Cuba. Using different algorithmic systems, I begin the reiterative steps to generate aesthetically balanced and abstract images.  This process allows me to work through many different solutions for the series, for example sixty variations, from which the eight most appealing and effective, non-symmetrical images were selected. Additionally, composited images are infused with color from the visible electromagnetic spectrum and printed on aluminum using a dye-sublimation printing process.
 
The title of the series references the shape and 1:2 ratio of each piece, which is based on a square root four rectangle or, more simply, two squares side by side. This proportion has a digital and binary code relationship. The number of pieces in the series, eight, is also an iterative, binary number. The Root Four Series marries the ideas of analogue and digital, handmade and algorithm, past and present, and old and new.