Lizzy Brooks

Sense & System

United States

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Sense & System explores the gap between the hand and the machine, and what we might discover there.
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In this series I am inspired by my young daughter’s fascination with the circular form and her efforts to master roundness. I made a series of attempts to write a software script able to mimic her uniquely imperfect circles.

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I write a software script in p5js to generate a mathematical image.

I then cut that image from a variety of materials (cardboard, acrylic, wood, fabric) and layer the cuts onto photo paper in a traditional darkroom.

Experience the project
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As I exposed the paper, I moved the shapes around, returning to the intuitive and imperfect technique that my daughter uses to draw her circles. This is a slow, inefficient, and playful process driven by materials rather than theory.

image of the project
The shapes that emerge from this process read as concurrently handmade and machine-made. They look like they could be found in nature, but there is also something unnatural about them.

Lizzy Brooks

Lizzy Brooks is an artist, technologist and high school computing teacher based in San Francisco. Working in community, she seeks to merge personal and political narratives to trace the nuanced boundaries of the self, as it bleeds into cultural identity, the city and the land, and technology. Both her art and teaching practices focus on inclusion— she works to demystify jargon, to create experiences that are accessible, intuitive and welcoming. She is also a mother of two young children, whose curiosity and wonder gives her a constant source of inspiration.

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