Code, Decay, and Ritual Memory

This project explores the intersection of analog decay and digital construction, merging expired 35mm film with algorithmic processes to reinterpret traditional image-making through a computational lens. By embedding code into the materiality of expired film, the project challenges the perceived obsolescence of both media and memory, transforming chemical degradation into a generative visual language. The process began with scanning and extracting decayed 35mm frames, each warped by time, humidity, and chemical instability. Ten frames were selected per sequence and algorithmically overlapped to form a single composite, pixelated image. This layering technique mimicked digital noise and interference while honoring the organic randomness of analog film failure. Each composition became a spectral palimpsest—images of the past haunted by code. Two distinct urban narratives emerged: one centered on the dense, neon-wired infrastructure of Akihabara, Tokyo, a district synonymous with electrical surplus, pop techno-culture, and futurism; the other captured the textured vernacular of Mexico City’s architecture, interwoven with visual cues from curanderismo, a syncretic healing tradition practiced by curanderos. Their ritual tools—candles, herbs, bones—along with the geometry of colonial and pre-Columbian structures, were abstracted and recontextualized through generative layering, visualizing ancestral knowledge systems as data-rich cosmologies. The final renders were printed on transparent vellum, allowing light to filter through the layers, further echoing the theme of spectrality and revealing a tension between presence and disappearance. These prints became translucent archives, evoking both digital screens and X-ray film, suggesting that memory, like media, is never static but always undergoing transformation.

Exhibition Opening:
December 2nd, 2022
Experimental Digital Arts at The Broad Art Center, Los Angeles, CA