John Houck's Aggregates

John Houck’s Aggregates (2011) attempt to create desire that resists a world consumed with highly repetitive things through a combination of physical intervention and reprinting. Using custom-written software, Houck generates every possible combination for a given grid printed as a contact sheet on photographic paper. These contact sheets are creased and re-photographed several times. This process creates layered borders that reveal the construction of each piece and adds its own layer of information, breaking the rigid system of the grid. By physically creasing and re-photographing these repetitive contact sheets, Houck reconciles the digital ground of photography and shows us the failures and ruptures in today’s algorithmic basis of photography. (Text: Magenta magazine)