Gold Futures 1

GOLD FUTURES by James Bloom (Crashblossom) are three distinct digital visions presented in a physical paper format. Each one provides a different flavour of digital enticement. They contain glimpses of figurative scenes, but with digital iconography mixed in. They are flat yet also 3-dimensional. They are abstracted from reality but have a vivid presence. These printed images assert their digitalness.

Like the dynamic blockchain art series GOLD they derive from, the artworks have bright and optimistic palettes, reflecting how the digital world is often presented to attract us. They are composed from web clipart libraries, common 2D icons used in interface design or corporate presentations. This imagery is extruded into 3D, saved out as flat 2D again, then composed together on-the-fly with dynamic code, which also introduces randomness. Single snapshots in time are chosen by the artist.

With GOLD FUTURES, the artist explores how digital media present an optimistic vision to entice us to engage. But he is not negative about technology, instead asserting its importance to art in an age where we are surrounded by the digital. Bloom believes the digital and physical are simply the same thing—the world itself—expressed through different modes of representation.