Ellen Ramsey – Dall E 07.51.35
Since 2020, Ellen has been working with the themes of connection, consumption, and materiality as it relates to technology. This body of work is inspired by the visual appearance of circuit board assemblies. The arrangement of copper traces and components on microchips are grid-based and often remind her of textile patterns. She merges the design languages of circuitry and traditional textile forms to highlight the humanity that is wired into our digital lives. The binary language of the loom is perfectly suited to the task. From a narrative perspective, Ellen’s tapestries always derive from her feelings and observations towards life, and life today is driven by the digital.
Computer chips are measured in millimetres, yet if circuitry were sized according to its impact on our lives, it would surround us like a redwood forest. Her oversized soft circuits reflect upon this unseen reality. As an artist, she embodies the term “digital immigrant.” She works in a slow and ancient medium yet designs her work using digital tools and generative software.
DALL·E 07.51.35 was designed using generative Al. She entered the text prompt “colourful circuit board lines and shapes on a green background arranged as a rectangular woven carpet design with a central medallion and a border” into the image generator DALL-E2. Many strange and wonderful images were generated, but most of them did not grasp the intent behind the prompt. However, digital image DALL·E 07.51.35 was exactly what Ellen was looking for – a true marriage of the analogue and the digital, something she had only achieved before through laborious manipulations in Photoshop. This tapestry is a faithful interpretation of the Al generated design. DALL·E 07 .51.35 conveys the idea of a motherboard without being literal. Best of all, the design manages to be both orderly and random at the same time. Ellen didn’t design this piece, but her hand and her artistic intent is fully present. It represents a weird duality, a true collaboration. Such is the future in the age of Al.