ADA
“Becoming with the meditations on her screen, emerging artist Fran Hayes dissects, digests, and reassembles motifs from Maggie Roberts’ ‘Becoming Octopus’ series. In exquisite corps style, shared between screens and folded digit by digit in 3Dimensional digital space, Maggie’s tentacles emerge coding the language of the screen…
‘ADA’
2021
Digital painting on C-Type Fuji Pearl
…Using the space of Blender, a free and open-source 3D modelling and animating program, Fran creates the entity now referred to as ADA. ADA began as a simple sphere, a blob of digital clay, an ORB. Slowly and meticulously, they were carved, sculpted, and moulded into an unrecognisable and amorphous form who, with the addition of Maggie’s tentacles - borrowed from the meditation series IMT Gallery commissioned for THIS IS A NOT-ME – transitioned from ORB to ADA.
The transition is important. Think Dr Who regeneration. ADA is a symbol, a statement, a capturing of the time between regenerations, a reflection on lockdown and the face of the rebrand of IMT.
Take a closer look. Can you see the sucker that is extracting and discarding the ‘i’ of IMT? There is no need for the emphasis of the ‘I’ or individual in IMT. ADA encourages IMT to transition, or to enter an endless transition – destination unknown.
ADA fondly refers to Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer who recognised machine functions beyond pure calculation, who published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. ADA’s body reflects the brain in the machine, pulsing with the energy of the Tardis.
Teleporting between digital and physical worlds, ADA anchors themself in printed matter for their first incarnation, encoding the space of the exhibition ‘Metabolic Market: A Dimensionally Diabolical Department’ at GIANT gallery in Bournemouth (2021). Glimmering on Kodak Metallic Paper as a special edition of 23 pieces, ADA is searching for 23 guardians." - Kirsten Cooke
