Jesse Stecklow

Jesse Stecklow builds systems of generative making, creating works that determine content and material for future works. For example, for multiple pieces he has borrowed a system of documentation involving the use of air samplers. Commonly employed in factory or fabrication environments to test for toxins, the samplers mimic contemporary standards for data collection. This data acts as a list of possible material decisions based on the different compounds that the lab finds in analysis. These data sets are a means of flattening and compressing a large amount of spatial information as a photograph or architectural model might.

Like much of Stecklow’s practice, these works are located in a sort of semi-functional state where they are unstable, actively gaining and losing bits of functionality while partaking in an often constant flow of information.