Eric William Carrol
Saturday, 14 December 2013
Work from his oeuvre.
“Amelia Sechman: The collages in your most recent series, G.U.T. (Grand Unification Theory) Feeling, seem like an intuitive visual cataloging system. Where do the connections come from?
Eric William Carroll: A combination of theory and experience. Since the project is attempting to communicate something purely via photographs, I rely on visual similarities to make connections. But beneath the surface I’m trying to establish deeper connections.
AS: Were there any particularly extraordinary moments when you realized the connections between two things that previously seemed unrelated?
EWC: It wasn’t really a “moment,” but I had the gradual realization that everything is connected and that it’s only a matter of degree or perspective that separates something from everything else.
AS: What is it about these visual echoes and rhythms that compels you to bring them together?
EWC: Part of it is wanting to understand the world on a basic scientific level. The other part is that, image-wise, we’re seeing a huge variety of photographs appear together in the same container for the first time—by that I mean Google’s image search, Tumblr, Flickr, etc. Bringing seemingly random images together on the screen creates new connections. New photographic synapses are being formed. And also, I have a firm belief that everything is related and some things are more closely bound together than others (see fig. 3.4 and 4.2).
AS: Those diagrams seem to represent humankind’s impulse to reduce vastly different quantities into digestible, bite-size pieces. How does this processing of the infinitely huge and infinitesimally small factor into your work?
EWC: Well, that’s what photography does. It flattens, compresses, and objectifies. It’s up to me and the viewer to unpack that information and put it back together in a way that makes sense (or non-sense).” – excerpt from an interview with Amelia Sechman for Daily Serving