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GOTHIC DRAWINGS! An exotic trumpet sounds from the depths of the forest sending scampering creatures into panic and awakening otherwise inanimate life amongst the nervous vegetations. Nearby a small research station shakes as though the horn had been an earth quake, spilling samples, scattering files, toppling furniture and smashing three large computers. Once the ground had settled, the settlers began to recuperate, replacing items, fixing structures and tolling for the damage. A young native boy and the youngest of the scientists found themselves kneeling beside the ruined technology utterly baffled by what they saw. The shattered casings revealed all the microchips, wires and small motors they had known where inside the machines but for some strange reason the components seemed altered and entirely unfamiliar. Neither of the two onlookers could understand nor explain this weird anomaly but somehow the robotics had come to resemble the surrounding forest environment. Just as a circuit board might look like a tiny model city, if one was to examine it while living in a city, here the circuitry held a likeness to the vines, the dirt, the water and the flowers. The computer’s intestines appeared as a mirror reflection or quite possibly even a natural part of the woods all around.
Time passed following the incident and many things changed. The research camp grew and the computers got faster just as all the countries grew and all computers got faster. In the blink of an eye spring had turned into summer and by the end of fall and the first snow fall, all of the worlds mechanics came to look exactly like those discovered by the boy and the young scientist. Of course the boy was now a man and the young scientist was past his pension but neither of these progressions had any bearing on the widespread modifications which occurred as a result of their find. Computers that looked like plants had become extremely fashionable. Gone were the cubes, sleek designs and straight edged circuitry in favor of a new and indescribably organic approach.
In fact the change was so drastic, one might even say ideological, that within the span of another four seasons no one could even remember the old robotically styled machines. It was as though computers had always been programmed like nature; growing like vines, as vast as the ground, flowing like water and a beautiful as any floral foliage. So great was the evolution that it took less than two subsequent winters before people had forgotten which had come first. Was the keyboard design based on a tree or did the tree mimic the keyboard? In a few winters more the machines would grow flesh, first like small animals and eventually like man. Once again people ceased to differentiate the chronology of the modifications. Was a human’s voice all their own or merely one end of a phone? Which one is the imposter and which one is real?
This series of Gothic Drawings was made throughout the summer of 2011 with pen and ink on 8.5 x 11 inch archival illustration board.
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