Siebren Versteeg is known for strategic digital interventions that detangle the omnipresent data stream from contemporary life. Versteeg utilizes real-time data such as Google image searches, live news feeds, and soap opera plot summaries, and condenses the noise into humorous and poetic works that highlight the pervasive and escalating influence media plays on our perception of the world.

The multiple new works produced for the exhibition include generatively produced images, videos, and audio works that engage the viewer with eternal digital scenarios, contrasting human mortality with the lifespan of data. Something for Everyone (2007) collages hundreds of thousands of downloaded images into an endless, perspectival field, above which a B-2 Stealth Bomber soars. The Higher We Climb, The Further We See (From), 16,777,216 – variation 1 (2007), composites each of the 16,777,216 colors of the RGB digital palette in a random configuration, creating an all-over field of non-information.

As The World Turns (2006) transcribes the daily synopsis of the soap opera, which has aired continuously for 50 years, through notes that the artist’s avatar appears to scrawl continuously in front of a webcam. Boom (fresher acconci) (2007) also fixes the artist in a computer-generated lock groove. Taking a visual cue from Vito Acconci’s Red Tapes, the work randomly downloads images from the internet, which the artist slaps onto a table one at a time. DS (Dark Star) (2007) perpetually re-authors the Grateful Dead’s infamous and seemingly unending swan song.