Anna Pinkas

I use technology to analyze and collect mundane details of our urban, media-driven lives. The meticulous alteration and re-sequencing of these elements is at the center of my process. The tension between analog and digital at play in my work is a reflection of our daily experience of being torn between our screen-based, data-filled reality and our tangible one. My work often involves a painstaking series of translations – from screen to paper, from video to hand drawn animation, or from 3D object to flat surface – that blur the line between absurdity and whimsy. These time-consuming and repetitive processes surface the strange, complex and/or beautiful qualities of the everyday behaviors and artifacts that are my subject matter: In a series of smartphone-size animations, ubiquitous interactions with our mobile devices become alien choreographies. Chairs, tables and lamps for sale on eBay are transformed into dollhouse-like paper miniatures that can be printed and reconfigured by the viewers in their own home. Digital tools are essential to my practice, but they are also the very thing I attempt to escape by imbuing my work with traces of the human hand. An algorithm may be able to produce infinitely complex visual forms and automate repetitive tasks, but it cannot replicate the poignancy of human labor, thoughtfulness and dedication.