Absence & presence

The first series I made were computer laser cut letterpress prints. In this series I have written a program that “absently” creates the image. I am including the Processing computer code that generates all the imagery and the lines of text, basically these instructions tell the program what to do and where to put each pixel of colour. Each time the program is run it creates a slightly different image, with a different cloud/smoke formation, different branches and different position of the sun. The image is built up gradually over time. For these prints it is run for 30 minutes (one minute for each life lost in the bombing). The random nature of the clouds/smoke in the image mirrors the senseless random act of violence.
The words are from an ancient Arabic poem “On a thunder storm” by Ibrahim Ben Khiret Abou Isaac, whose original meaning can be now be given a new interpretation in the context of the print.