The works in ‘Nested Exchange’ could be thought of as ‘information works’ as much as art works. The individual specimens find their form by a process of information exchange with each other. The images are connected via nodes in a nested structure. They ‘communicate’ by the flipping of a node within the structure which then creates a new equilibrium in the system which affects everything that comes afterward. Nodes communicate - or gossip - with each other. The imperative of the work is to produce the greatest diversity possible, so each specimen is driven to be as different as it can be from those around it (I've also called this my "hipster algorithm").
There are a number of themes that come into play in a work like ‘Nested Exchange’. The specimens are configured in nested recursive ‘tree’ structures similar to those used in the first iterations of Chomskyan linguistics. Ultimately, the output of these exchanges are different from language in a number of ways. One of the most divergent features is that in the work no new information - per se - is produced, but existing information is recombined toward an optimally diverse distribution. The nest is a kind of open and closed system at once, recursive, and, therefore, functionally infinite, but also radically constrained. The system records its changes between states as ‘snapshots’, leaving a complete history of itself in a manner similar to a blockchain ledger.
