Karin Denson

I was born in Poland (Silesia), grew up in Germany, and moved with my family to the US in 2014. For many years I worked as a special education, Montessori, and art teacher.

My work combines a love for nature with my curiosity about digital processes, including their often unexpected aleatoric outcomes. I focus especially on wildlife, mainly that of Northern California’s coastal regions where I live. Typically I start with videos of animals in motion, sometimes intensified by the movements of the elements and light, which I subject to various digital transformations in order to produce glitches. For example, I process videos in the “wrong” software, such as an audio program, which distorts or even breaks the images. But while glitches of this sort can be described as malfunctions or errors, I prefer to view them as aesthetic artifacts. In a last step I select single frames from these videos and paint them in acrylic or assemble collages out of them. Produced through a combination of voluntary and uncontrolled editing processes, a mixture of organic and technical processes, these images show our precious wildlife in temporary malfunctions that speak to the fragile balance of our larger (eco-) systems.