Javier Molina

This work is a layered construction of symbols with color sand with a digital layer of AI using google's deep dream algorithm. The nature of the avant-garde persisted in my mind as I study the subject of magical realism and visual art, these ideas emerged through symbols and emphasized the meaning and feelings behind the forms, lines, shapes, and colors. The ideology of this work is in rejection of the art establishment and academia but also as a way to explore my unconscious, and to keep traces of my research on altered states of consciousness and shamanism. This work is performed with no religious guidelines that might inform attempts to visualize the realm of the sacred, and with no traditional iconography on which to build, it is my intention to depend on the perception of symbols and to follow the legacy of the Avant-garde to create my work. "Nature is no longer understood as being filled with gods, demons or spirits that might assist, hinder or terrify us. It is no longer shot through with occult connections between one object and another."[Bronislaw Szerszynski. Nature Technology and the Sacred (p. 4). ’] This is an approach to digital technologies which emphasizes the “magical qualities” of applied science,  opening possibilities to see the subconscious. I have selected textiles and patterns of Latin American pre-colonial cultures to combine with the digital imaging of sand sculptures I made on a flat surface, later using google's deep dream algorithm, I applied machine learning techniques to the digital processing, the end purpose is to weave magical elements onto the images, offering ambiguous conditions of possibility for religion or spiritual practices. The purpose of this layer of the algorithm could be interpreted as a ‘return of the sacred’.