“Outer Conflict”

An exploration of identity, obfuscation, fear and socialization; the psychological violence of being.

 ✐  Under This Mask, Another — Open Edition [Highlight ↗︎] [Foundation ↗︎] — April 17-24 2024
 ✐  What We Hide Bleeds Out — 50 curated pcs. [Highlight ↗︎] — IRL minting in Venice, April 2024

Two collections: a colorful open edition called Under This Mask, Another and a limited monochrome series called What We Hide Bleeds Out.

While aesthetically related, they abstract opposing viewpoints. The former focuses more on what we hide behind and the latter about what we are hiding (and maybe a little about what happens to those hidden parts.)

The name of the open edition comes from a quote that I love:

"Under this mask, another mask. I will never finish removing all these faces."
— Claude Cahun

I think about this quote a lot, especially as an alt. I even have a portrait of Claude Cahun tattooed onto my arm to remind me that a lot of what I am (or think I am, and as such, behave accordingly) is just the result of programming or socialization; that fear is a major contributor to what makes me want to stay in whatever box society (or what-have-you) may have prescribed. Having a reminder that it is just a fear—and that some of what I am is product of that fear—helps to break out of that trap of assigned identity.

These collections are about how we are buried far under what we have constructed ourselves as, whether to assimilate and please the world around us, or act against some part of it. All to say, some parts of what we are isn't us at all, but subterfuge to protect what we consider core to us.

We may draw ourselves with broad strokes hiding any subtleties that could prove vulnerable. We may decorate those broad strokes with complexity to camouflage something we value. We may take on roles that fall into or subvert expectation. We may create personas to protect our fragile egos.

We may draw little boxes to keep ourselves inside, a little shelter from humanity, hoping that what we hide can thrive, but does it? There is a version that may suffocate, but hopefully fights, reaching for the light of day, breaking from that little box.

The boundaries between personas bleed both ways, and even those erected to protect another may leak what we seek to shield, or allow trauma in.

How many layers of persona have we constructed and which are projections of instinct, and which are reactionary or performative?

Part of the question is... even if I took this Ty Vek mask off—which barely obfuscates in the first place—would it really reveal anything? Or, just show another constructed identity? Is the illusion for you or me?

Display notes/Commands

Both projects are written in vanilla Javascript, composed as SVG and then rendered to a 2d canvas.

Press "S" to save a PNG at the current resolution.

For higher resolution images, append &density=2 (or, 3, 4, etc) the end of the URL. It will stop working at a certain point because browsers can only handle so much, but hopefully in the future, their tolerances will go up. Safari tends to have problems with this, so stick with Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc.)

There might be slight differences in rendering from browser to browser. This is expected as they might translate the SVG slightly differently. Let's call Chromium renderings canonical. They also render faster there and we love that.

Printing Notes

The key thing here is texture for printing, so the main advice I can give is to find a printer that has the paper that will work best and go from there. Personally, I made prints using Hahnemühle William Turner (310 gsm) but there a number of papers from Hahnemühle that will work, like German Etching (310 gsm) or Museum Etching (350 gsm).

If you have a local printer that you like, please support them. If not, I recommend Whitewall for ease, expediency and a high quality print. Choose their "Fine Art Print" (which uses the Giclée process) and then make sure to select the William Turner paper. Tribeca Printworks is another option, they have German Etching paper and while I haven't personally used them, they are well regarded.

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