Clement Valla
A Google Tree
Interview with Bitforms: “[...] So in some sense I’m trying to create a picture to elicit a particular kind of human attention and response, but the picture is created by and composed of algorithms, software and data. And to some degree these can be antithetical, but I’m trying to make sense of the human-machine axis in ways that don’t anthropomorphize machines or reduce humans to computers. Something more productive, more hopeful, where the differences and the gaps between human and machine ‘vision’ produce surprising and fruitful new ways of looking at the world.
The pandemic has also provided time to reflect on exactly what I do as an artist – how I work and what my role is. And something I keep questioning is the central role usually ascribed to the artist. I work with so many things that have their own logics, rules and processes, like computers, digital cameras, and all the software I use that is the joint creation of so many people. In some ways I’m more of a simple operator of a complicated picture-making apparatus. I’m not the prime agent of it’s aesthetic, I’m merely trying to steer it in a particular direction. Something that’s stuck with me is when (Vilém) Flusser says that artists aim at making improbable images within their apparatus.
So ultimately the way I work is with pre-existing software and digital apparatuses, connected to sensors, fabrication and printing technologies. I think of them as super simple ecologies when they are combined together. What I do is try and seed these processes with different things and see what happens. Some things grow completely fine on their own and need no intervention from me at all—I’m simply left to discover really interesting forms. Some things need more work in tending to—pruning, pushing in particular directions. But I am following or flowing with all the nonhuman elements that participate in the creation of the artwork. And in that sense gardening actually becomes an apt metaphor for making art with technology. It’s a metaphor that foregrounds context and environment, that emphasizes slow repetitive work, steady observation, and that reduces the artist to simply being one agent among many in a rich ecosystem.” - Clement Valla
Clement Valla is a New York based artist whose work considers the way computer vision systems apprehend the world, and the way in which automated image production entangles people and things in increasingly complex ways. His work has been cited in The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, El Pais, Huffington Post, Rhizome, Domus, Wired, The Brooklyn Rail, Liberation, and on BBC television. Valla received a BA in Architecture from Columbia University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Digital+Media. He is currently an assistant professor at RISD.
He has had recent solo exhibitions at bitforms gallery in San Francisco, CA; XPO Gallery in Paris, France; and Transfer Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. His work has also been exhibited at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), Seoul, South Korea; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen, Germany; MU, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Stedelijk Museum, Breda, The Netherlands; Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, France; the ICA, London, United Kingdom; The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY; Thomassen Galleri, Gothenburg, Sweden; Mulherin + Pollard Projects, New York, NY; DAAP Galleries, University of Cincinnati, OH; 319 Scholes, Brooklyn, NY.
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2011 “Jenny Odell and Clement Valla — Meridian,” Wire & Nail, San Francisco, CA
“Paradise,” Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, Antiguo Edificio De Tabacalera, Madrid, Spain
TV Cable Broadcast, Souvenirs From Earth TV, Cologne, Germany
“Help Wanted”, Culturehall Feature Issue 69, culturehall.com
“The Real and the Represented,” Little Paper Planes, Oakland, CA
“The Wassaic Project Summer Festival,” The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY “pixilerations [v.8],” Sol Koffler Gallery, Providence, RI
2010 “Public Records,” Public Fiction (the museum of), Los Angeles, CA
“Like Death, Santa Fe Will Catch Up With You In The End, Kevin Zucker and Chris Ho”, Fisher Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico; participant
“The Big Country,” The Moviehouse in Millerton, Millerton, NY
“pixilerations [v.7],” Sol Koffler Gallery, Providence, RI
“A Flawed Providence,” Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL
“The Wassaic Project Summer Festival,” The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY “ELOAI,” Brown University, Providence, RI
2009 “Left To Chance,” Firehouse 13, Providence, RI
“The Wassaic Project Summer Festival,” The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY
MFA Thesis Exhibition, Rhode Island School of Design Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence RI
“Boston CyberArts Festival,” Boston, MA
2008 “Reverse Turing Tests: Hilary Berseth and Kevin Zucker,” Eleven Rivington, New York; collaborator on Zuckerʼs “curated” paintings
“From Big Box to White Box,” Gelman Gallery, Chace Center, RISD, Providence, RI
“MircroMediations,” Sol Koffler Gallery, RISD, Providence, RI