Eric Corriel Studios

multidisciplinary art studio • immersive and interactive public art • art activism • digital/electronic art • nyc

Enter The Machine 1.0

Algorithmically generated prints with microcontroller, 2016

Multi-colored digital constellation of brightly colored, slightly pixelated, organically shaped digital blobs on a black background
Image courtesy of Eric Corriel Studios

Enter The Machine 1.0 expands the boundaries of portraiture to include digital entities such as files, folders, programs, and systems Shown at Garis & Hahn Galley, Manhattan, NY; Art Basel, Miami Beach, FL; Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY; Creative Tech Week, Queens, NY; Target Gallery, Alexandria, VA; Made in NY Media Center, Brooklyn, NY

Photograph in a dark art gallery, in the center of which is a open cavity of a box showing electrical wires going hither and thither, backlight by a purple light and shrouded by black cloth on the sides. On top of the box is a glass orb and behind it, flanked on both sides are illuminated artworks hanging on barely lit walls.
Enter The Machine : exhibition shot; photo by Brett Wood

A good portrait, it is commonly believed, captures the rich, inner world of its subject.

While the history of portraiture is long and complex, one clear trend that has emerged is the ever-increasing democratization of the portrait itself. Once reserved for kings, queens, and the aristocracy; it was unthinkable that portraiture would be accessible to the general public. Now most people can create dozens of portraits instantly with their phone.

But where does the democratization of portraiture end? What will be the next group to gain access to portraiture?

Enter The Machine is a portrait studio for digital entities such as files, folders, programs, and systems that aims to provide a new way of seeing our digital files. One that does justice to their uniqueness, the diversity of the data they contain, and the complexity by which they are structured. To show their inner world.

The original Enter The Machine solo exhibition at Garis & Hahn in 2016 consisted of nine original 48” x 30” programmatically generated Duratrans prints in handmade light boxes. Each one contains a custom built electronic circuit that allows the light boxes to slowly pulse. The nine light boxes are listed below.

~/Desktop

Photograph of a wooden-framed, very bright/illuminated artwork hanging on a gray wall. The content of the work is dozens and dozens of snake-like organically pixelated forms vaguely oriented to the northeast of the frame against a very dark blue/purple background.
~/Desktop, photo by Brett Wood

~/Desktop consists of 218 distinct files from taken from the artist’s desktop totaling 1.4GB of data. The dataset contains mostly jpg and png files (orange/red), with occasional mov files (pink), zip files (white), and Microsoft Office files (green and blue).

Close-up photograph of multiple digitally organic clusters of red, orange, pink, purple, and white contiguous forms set against a deep blue background.
~/Desktop (detail), photo by Brett Wood

~/Downloads

Close-up photograph of multiple teal, blood orange, canary yellow, and magenta strands of contiguous digital clusters against a bluish/blackish background.
~/Downloads, photo by Brett Wood

The artist’s downloads folder, ~/Downloads, consists mostly of open source programming libraries and frameworks, such as OpenFrameworks, which was used to create these works. These coding libraries normally consist of thousands of small text files, which is what forms the very clustered center. Also in the Downloads folder are various pdfs, images, movies, and zip files.

~/Library/Mail/@imap.gmail.com/Data

Photograph of a wooden-framed, illuminated artwork hanging on a gray wall showing concentrated masses of teal and turquoise pixel clusters, seemingly expanding from left to right, against a deep blue background.
~/Library/Mail/@imap.gmail.com/Data, photo by Brett Wood

~/Library/Mail/@imap.gmail.com/Data shows 580 emails and their respective attachments, received between September 2014 and December 2014. The purple elements are the text component of each email while attachments are either represented in teal, orange for pdf files, and red for images.

Close-up photograph of multiple teal, blood orange, canary yellow, and magenta strands of contiguous digital clusters against a bluish/blackish background.
~/Library/Mail/@imap.gmail.com/Data (detail), photo by Brett Wood

~/Music/iTunes/Music/Compilations, A–E

Photograph of a wooden-framed, illuminated artwork hanging on a gray wall showing concentrated masses of teal and turquoise pixel clusters, seemingly expanding from left to right, against a deep blue background.
~/Music/iTunes/Music/Compilations, A–E, photo by Brett Wood

~/Music/iTunes/Music/Compilations, A–E, is an excerpt from the artist’s iTunes Compilations folder (artists A–E)—which contains 547 mp3 files for a total of 2GB of music.

Close-up photograph of the above artwork showing a blooming mass of teal, turquoise, and bluish/purplish pixel clusters, with digital barbed wire—looking strands running across the surface of the image from left to right.
~/Music/iTunes/Music/Compilations, A–E (detail), photo by Brett Wood

~/Dropbox

Photograph of a wooden-framed, illuminated artwork hanging on a gray wall showing a swirling mass of yellow, peach, pink, white, and green mostly stringified forms, seemingly revolving around a sun-like mass in the middle of the artwork; set against a deep blue background.
~/Dropbox, Photo by Brett Wood

One’s Dropbox folder is often the digital equivalent of a biologically diverse ecosystem, teaming with digital diversity. ~/Dropbox, the artist’s Dropbox folder, contains 2.5GB of data spread over 7,152 files of over 100 different types.

Close-up photograph of the middle of the previous image showing a swirling chaotic mess of multicolored, organically shaped pixel clusters against a deep blue background.
~/Dropbox (detail); photo by Brett Wood

~/Library/Application Support/1Password 5/Data

Photograph of a wooden-framed, illuminated artwork hanging on a gray wall showing a constellation of hundreds of small asteroid-shaped purple clusters against a deep blue background.
~/Library/Application Support/1Password 5/Data, photo by Brett Wood

~/Library/Application Support/1Password 5/Data renders all 566 of the artist’s passwords in plain sight for all to see.

~/Library/Application Support/1Password 5/Data

/System/Library/LinguisticData

Photograph of a wooden-framed, illuminated artwork hanging on a gray wall showing a smattering of green and white striated, organically shaped pixelated forms against a deep blue background.
/System/Library/LinguisticData, photo by Brett Wood

Buried in the System folder of Mac OS X v10.10 is a folder called LinguisticData, which contains the files needed to translate the operating system into Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish. /System/Library/LinguisticData represents the linguistic bindings for the Mac OS X v10.10 operating system.

Close-up photograph of the aforementioned image which shows three striated and somewhat squid-like green, white, and purple striated, organically shaped pixelated forms against a deep blue background.
/System/Library/LinguisticData (detail)

~/Work/SVA/2015

Photograph of a wooden-framed, illuminated artwork hanging on a gray wall showing a glitched-out, strongly horizontal composition of mostly purple and orange organically shaped pixel clusters punctuated by five black-background horizontal rows of varying heights; set against a royal purple background.
~/Work/SVA/2015, photo by Brett Wood

The artist works and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. ~/Work/SVA/2015 consists of 1.9GB worth of work created for SVA throughout 2015.

Close-up photograph of the aforementioned image which shows mostly orange organically shaped pixel clusters punctuated by two black-background horizontal rows of varying heights; set against a royal purple background.
~/Work/SVA/2015 (detail), photo by Brett Wood

seancorriel.com, lustforart.com, mattcorriel.com, reidblackman.com

Photograph of the inside of a gallery that shows two landscape-oriented works of art in wooden frames hanging on a wall. The photo is shot from a roughly 45-degree angle.
seancorriel.com, lustforart.com, mattcorriel.com, reidblackman.com, photo by Brett Wood

Previously working as a freelance web designer/developer, the artist created lots of websites for friends and family. seancorriel.com, lustforart.com, mattcorriel.com, reidblackman.com is his way of paying tribute to that part of his life. This work consists 3,608 files across four different websites resulting in over 418MB of data, mostly in the form of php, html, css, jpg, png, html, css, psd, and javascript files.

seancorriel.com, lustforart.com, mattcorriel.com, reidblackman.com

Garis & Hahn Gallery

Photograph of a gallery opening taken from above showing roughly 20 people looking at illuminated artworks hanging on a wall; the gallery space is dimly lit.
Enter The Machine at Garis & Hahn, photo by Brett Wood
Photograph of a dimly lit, empty gallery space showing five illuminated works hanging on a wall. In the middle of the space is a glass globe on a black pedestal, from the base of which run thick black wire molding that connects to the base of each illuminated artwork.
Enter The Machine at Garis & Hahn, photo by Brett Wood
Photograph of a dimly lit, empty gallery space with four illuminated artworks hanging on the wall in the background and a glass globe on a dark pedestal in the foreground.
Enter The Machine at Garis & Hahn, photo by Brett Wood
Photograph of a hard drive seemingly floating inside a glass sphere, reflecting the light of the illuminated paintings around it; in the background are two blurry figures looking at artwork.
Enter The Machine at Garis & Hahn, photo by Brett Wood
Small thumbnail image of Photograph of a gallery opening taken from above showing roughly 20 people looking at illuminated artworks hanging on a wall; the gallery space is dimly lit.
Small thumbnail image of Photograph of a dimly lit, empty gallery space showing five illuminated works hanging on a wall. In the middle of the space is a glass globe on a black pedestal, from the base of which run thick black wire molding that connects to the base of each illuminated artwork.
Small thumbnail image of Photograph of a dimly lit, empty gallery space with four illuminated artworks hanging on the wall in the background and a glass globe on a dark pedestal in the foreground.
Small thumbnail image of Photograph of a hard drive seemingly floating inside a glass sphere, reflecting the light of the illuminated paintings around it; in the background are two blurry figures looking at artwork.

Enter The Machine was on display at Garis & Hahn in New York City from January 27th to April 17th, 2016.

The installation is accompanied by Digital Matter, a 15 minute looped single channel sound composition by Krista Dragomer. Each light box is handmade made by Chris Miano.

In May, 2024, the works in this series were renamed as follows:

  • Enter The Machine 1.0: My Desktop → ~/Desktop
  • Enter the Machine 1.1: Downloads (stock photos, bank statements, open source code libraries, etc) → ~/Downloads
  • Enter The Machine 1.2: Three Months of Email → ~/Library/Mail/@imap.gmail.com/Data
  • Enter the Machine 1.3: iTunes Compilations, A–E → ~/Music/iTunes/Music/Compilations, A–E
  • Enter the Machine 1.4: Dropbox → ~/Dropbox
  • Enter the Machine 1.5: All My Passwords → ~/Library/Application Support/1Password 5/Data
  • Enter the Machine 1.6: Mac OS X 10.10 Linguistic Data → /System/Library/LinguisticData
  • Enter the Machine 1.7: Work Done for the School of Visual Arts in 2015 → ~/Work/SVA/2015
  • Enter the Machine 1.8: Websites I Created for Friends and Family, namely, lustforart.com, mattcorriel.com, reidblackman.com, seancorriel.com → seancorriel.com, lustforart.com, mattcorriel.com, reidblackman.com
This stack of paper is a complete listing of every file in this exhibition
Photograph taken inside a cafe. There’s a person with a blue hoodie and a computer at a wooden table in the foreground and an Enter The Machine artwork hanging in the background.
Enter The Machine at ONS, photo by Brett Wood
Photograph of a cafe that shows four Enter The Machine artworks hanging on a very wide white wall. In the middle of the frame is someone at a cafe table using a computer.
Enter The Machine at New York Media Center, photo by Brett Wood
Photograph of two Enter The Machine artworks hanging on a white wall, taken at a 45-degree angle with two people at a cafe bar in the background.
Enter The Machine at New York Media Center, photo by Brett Wood
Photograph of a booth at an art fair with multiple artworks hanging on multiple walls. An empty table resides in the middle of the space.
Enter The Machine at Miami Art Project, 2016; photo by Walker Waugh
Small thumbnail image of Photograph taken inside a cafe. There’s a person with a blue hoodie and a computer at a wooden table in the foreground and an Enter The Machine artwork hanging in the background.
Small thumbnail image of Photograph of a cafe that shows four Enter The Machine artworks hanging on a very wide white wall. In the middle of the frame is someone at a cafe table using a computer.
Small thumbnail image of Photograph of two Enter The Machine artworks hanging on a white wall, taken at a 45-degree angle with two people at a cafe bar in the background.
Small thumbnail image of Photograph of a booth at an art fair with multiple artworks hanging on multiple walls. An empty table resides in the middle of the space.
More Enter The Machine 1.0: