degraded/manifest

patched
2024
48 x 48 in
Océ print, OSB panel, wheatpaste

Layered in images picked out like specimens, collaged elements make up a massive Océ print pasted to the wall in a fashion similar to that of buildings slathered in years of ephemera and promotion. Much like the OSB board upon which it rests, this work is a reconstruction of a dilapidated image. patched oscillates between low and high resolutions simultaneously, its sections filtered through upscale-focused neural nets to produce a fleshy membrane where compressed pixels once were. These fibers blur the lines of the organized pixel matrices that make up a digital image, and reach towards a new organism. These digital image ‘specimens’ are part of a larger body of experimentation with continuous image compression and upscale, examining the ways in which AI can be ‘glitched’ by providing excessively textural or compressed images. Feigning uniform definition, these experiments diverge from tech’s exponential pursuit towards higher fidelity, to find an alternative. The original images, since lost in layers of abstraction and processing, contain a sentimentality made new in this repurposed form. How might one make the unknowable legible? patched takes the blurry and otherwise indiscernible, the repressed and the unconscious, and restitches it onto flesh and sinew.

Lithe Ettawageshik is a transdisciplinary glitch artist from Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are currently pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus in Film, Video, New Media and Animation. Utilizing digital collage, glitch techniques, and manipulation of texture via image compression & AI upscale tools, their work experiments with the organic behaviors of digital technology. Their work grapples with digital existence & physical bodies, creating layers of abstraction and separation to discover new forms of meaning. GRAVEGORE is a living archive of experimentation with their own self and its reflection within the screen.