you are numbered you are product you are doomed PROXY Gallery 2009-2012 (an online zencart storefront) http://bradbrace.net/proxy.html
Enlarged (custom, patented algorithms) and enhanced photographs (now, likely several hundred thousands, soon over a million), mostly low-res cellphone, web-cam, and low-end digital camera self-portraits (self-packaging), culled from dating/social websites. arkansas, asia-other, bangladesh, korea, lebanon, singapore, sri lanka, vietnam, australia, british columbia, arizona, brazil, caribbean, europe-other, florida, france, hawaii, idaho, illinois, india, italy, japan, louisiana, maine, mexico-latin-am, morroco, netherlands, new york, oceania, ontario, oregon, phillipines, quebec, rhode island, russia, south africa, argentina, chile, columbia, venezuela... download the backstory at: http://bbrace.net/proxy.pdf http://bradbrace.net/proxy.pdf https://www.amazon.com/author/bradbrace you are numbered you are product you are doomed PROXY Gallery 2009-2012 (an online zencart storefront) http://bbrace.net/proxy.html http://bradbrace.net/proxy.html now showing: Profile Portraits (we the people...) build your own exhibition + catalogue with commissioned encaustic profile paintings on 12x12" panels, any subject! Perhaps this reemergence of the individual is vital. Perhaps this is how we react as living beings, as mortals, to the threat of an omnipotent universe, the threat of a definitive unreality. so this whole array of technology could be taken to mean that we have again come to believe in our own existence. PROXY GALLERY (now showing: we the people): select and assemble your own custom art exhibition with catalogue based on commissioned portrait-paintings! Ultra hi-res art files, suitable for printing, are delivered in one custom pdf/ebook/directory. thousands of enlarged (custom, patented algorithms) and enhanced photographs (now, likely several hundred thousands, soon over a million,) mostly low-res cellphone, web-cam, and low-end digital camera self-portraits (self-packaging), culled from dating/social websites -- as you might expect, there is some explicit content (more than is permitted here unfortunately: you really should see them all, but it probably makes little difference) -- fascinating and occasionally disturbing. I've decided to also add a set of painting-filters -- this was good, as it enabled a 'recovery' of many more worthwhile images, and also clouded any possible erogenous/irregular corporate claims, but the project now extends beyond my life-span. I easily make small paintings from these images and people support that activity: commissioned portrait paintings, 12" square encaustic on panels, from your choice of subject -- selected pairs/couples can be intriguing --for $15,000US. it's interesting to find the balance/inertia point between the look of photo and painting, and it speaks to the current social/heroic condition! often the image-processing makes faces look squinty so it's necessary to 'bring-back' facial aspects. the display images on the PROXY Gallery storefront are but quick approximations of the larger art files which simply don't scale -- kinda like painted panels. another advantage of the painting filters is that they drastically reduce the file sizes and make it well-nigh impossible for someone to covertly res-up these display images for printing. it's quite incredible to realize that many of these pictures were only 3-4K or so when I started to work on them. you may realize that this is not the first time I've collected anonymous found-public imagery: notably dumpster-diving (bicycling with backpack at midnight,) at photofinishers' in the 70's. and of course, there's the "Insatiable Abstraction Engine" -- collections from newsgroups. [http://bbrace.net/insatiable-abstraction.html] but come to think it, nearly all my work involves repeated multiples or collections of imagery. my new friends. whenever possible I retained any color casts, cropping and lighting. the self-portraits are actually very considered, sometimes selections made/altered merely to obscure the identity that they wished to presumably portray initially. sunglasses are a popular ruse, as are close-ups of cleavage, butts, tattoos, feet and groins. (curiously, I've yet to see a picture of hands... ok, now I have: some intricate fingernails and the love/hate finger-tats.) many feature-obilerating camera-flash-portraits in the bathroom mirror. many of course, occur in and around motorized vehicles. only one (so far) in a grocery store. and some, but surprisingly few, are filched from somewhere online, but this must be a risky choice in the event of an 'actual encounter.' how much introductory information/description do you want to put out there to begin with? there are some very creative, even artful, solutions to this dilemma. various select national groups of portraits are also included in pdf ebook/directories for $250 (this is refunded with the order of one or more paintings; sorry about the price but it was a hellish amount of work and I guarantee you won't be disappointed or YMB), and can be ordered directly. these images contain sufficient resolution to print them out on letter-size/A4 paper (or coffee-mugs, keychains, magnets, photo-stamps, cards, calendars, tea-towels...) use my verified Paypal account to have the pdf delivered at no charge: [bbraceATeskimo.com; http://bradbrace.net/buy-into.html] also available through Scribd and Lulu. you can curate/assemble your own catalogue/exhibition at the PROXY Gallery storefront. art files along with encaustic painted panels are $15,000US each. my new friends. having been recently kicked-off Facebook (there was an anonymous report of a depicted nipple!), and losing 5,000 appreciative friends - the online storefront was the perfect place to host a social-media profile-portrait-collection... how hypocritical to object to profile pictures that may have been on FB to begin with; but it's fun to now position coloured boxes and bars over n?pples, c?nts and c?cks. how idiotic is that? the files of course required different custom algorithms and some masterful retouching -- they look great! technically given the incredibly diverse range of imagery it was difficult to make them all equally legible; despite a variety of intricate processing directives, the scripts would inevitably crash or be unable to render a decent image. these were handled individually as were the painting-filters. sure to be a collectors' (socio-anthropologists') item! an amazing and compelling, collective portrait! the interspersed military/gangster imagery (or maybe something else), also introduces a new spin on the hopes for this already tenuous social-media culture. I've had to organize/sub-divide these in some fashion, so by state/country seems to be the prevailing approach. California had to be the place to begin. and given how often workers are compelled to move around, there's more of a local difference in cultural self-perception, body language, and social-sexual proclivity than you might expect. it really is a perhaps overlooked (overly-present), socially significant era when a massive proportion of the population is able to individually exorcise their self-imagery instead of being routinely dependent on existing systematized systems of portraiture and presentation -- which is not to say that it's entirely free from stylistic-cultural-corporate constraints and codification (and why, for now at least, I left the imagery in a nearly random arrangement within each national/state sub-division), but the individual, probably for the first time ever, is seen freely negotiating a shifting porous skein of varied reception... well, something like that... but how could it possibly matter in this bigger world of shuffled lies. the future of humanities: buy-now -- it's an obviously exclusive, pointedly calculated, dismal, tired and insular discussion that somehow sadly shuffles "the deadly futures" of increasingly indebted/desperate privileged artworld acolytes who are compelled to repay by recycling received collegial/corporate diatribes... not unlike treacherously asking interrelated corrupt institutions such as illegitimate States whether they have any future: who will continue to profit and at what repercussive-peril for the populace (?) -- and what can it now mean to cling to the bandied, hollowed refrain of "we the people..." PROXY Gallery 2009-2012 (an online zencart storefront) http://bbrace.net/proxy.html http://bradbrace.net/proxy.html /:b
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