By Molly Tursi
Staff Writer
On Oct. 10, the College was joined by artist Tim Portlock via Zoom to discuss his digitally rendered image featured in the “Futures without Guns” exhibit currently displayed in the AIMM art gallery on campus.
The talk was held in the art gallery and students and educators were encouraged to ask Portlock questions following the session.
Coming from a traditional art background, Portlock earned a graduate degree in painting. After refining his art skills in muralism, his creative pursuits led him to continue his education with a degree in digital technology.
Inspired by interactive storytelling media, Portlock found his niche in creating desolate depictions of urban landscapes and city life. Portlock noted that the bulk of his work is based on his place of residence at the time, namely Philadelphia and St. Louis.
“One of the big motivations to make this work was relocating to Philadelphia, which at the time had 30,000 abandoned buildings. I was really impacted by the sort of scale of destitution in Philadelphia and I decided to make work that focused on that,” Portlock explained.
When discussing the technological process behind the creation of his images, Portlock credited various software applications and real life photographs.
“I go into my software and try to recreate a three digital version of the buildings from reference photos and then I would make a library of these buildings until I had enough to make my own version of the city.”
Portlock’s work is concerned with a future that is dictated by our current reality. Within his images, the artist conceptualizes both the threats and promises of the future and moves his audience to consider the hidden truth.
During a Q&A session, Portlock outlined the broader scope of his work and how his piece corresponds to the greater idea of the exhibition. “For this show, I was thinking of a really specific framework. Like, imagine a future without guns. And so for my image, I was like, well what were the needs to be to happen in Philadelphia,” he further explained.
Although Portlock’s work is predominantly inspired by American cities, he discussed his interest in foreign cities in Indonesia and the environmental inspiration that his travels have offered.
Despite this, he expressed hesitation to depict other cities and cultures unfamiliar to his own. “I think you have to be really careful when you make work, like obviously that’s something I’m concerned about, but when you make work about a place that you don't live in you need to be extra careful,” he added.
In the contemporary state of art, there has been a controversial uptick in the use of artificial intelligence to generate images deemed as artwork. Many artists of varying disciplines fear that AI will replace their role entirely, a prospect that threatens the authenticity of art.
“I’m always interested in new technology, obviously,” Portlock said. “And then I started to see art, like people who sort of stuck with it on my Instagram feed. I was like, oh that’s really interesting. I’ve never seen work like this. This is the work that was impossible before AI. So I was like, oh there’s something there, there are new qualities to this.”
Moving forward, Portlock plans to explore speculative and alternative history of America in his next projects. His image will be on display in the AIMM Art Gallery until Oct. 19.
