Clement Valla - Seed drawings

Clement Valla is an artist and programmer interested in processes that produce unfamiliar artifacts and skew reality. Valla works within systems, applying a ‘programmed brain’ that pushes problem-solving logic to irrational ends. His recent work examines copies, repetition and reproduction markets – from Chinese ‘Oil-Painting Factories’ to drawings on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This work explores the tension between individual creativity and the influence of systems and networks on the individual.

Each Seed Drawing is an aggregate of many smaller drawings, all produced as copies of one another.

Over a 3 month period, thousands of individuals were solicited to copy small simple line drawings, through an online labor marketplace called Amazon Mechanical Turk. As each copy was completed, it in turn was replicated by other Mechanical Turk workers. Each drawing is produced by a single individual with no knowledge of the overall forms and structure within the larger drawing.
The iterative process of copying produces growth-like structures in which different patterns of influence and large-scale structures emerge. These larger drawing characteristics are purely the result of local interactions; beyond the writing of the algorithm, no single individual is making larger decisions for the group.