Snowclones was completed as part of an on-line residency in the Failure in Chrome 'pavilion' as part of the Wrong Biennale of Digital Art 2017 (an online exhibition presenting digital art). I uploaded one post per day to the Failure in Chrome blog and Instagram account, culminating in a streamed live performance. The work extends upon linguistic structures known as 'snowclones': phrases in which certain words can be substituted, while retaining their overall structure. Snowclones share characteristics with many infinitely repeatable yet variable forms of online communication and aesthetic production such as memes, electronic music, selfies, stock images, pornography, social media posts and travel photography. In the work I reproduced the repeatable structure of snowclones in the form of text, video and image collages, and brought them together in a livestreamed online performance. Through this artistic process I explore various binaries and contradictions, such as that between the universal and the particular, the original and the copy, and the part and the whole.
Thomas Smith, Snowclones (2017), Performance documentation, Duration 20 minutes, Failure in Chrome @Wrong Biennale (full documentation of this performance available here, residency process documentation available here
Thomas Smith, I HEART (2017), single channel video, Duration 0.5 minutes, Failure in Chrome @Wrong Biennale
ANY SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED X IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM Y
Any sufficiently advanced practice is indistinguishable from doing things
Any sufficiently advanced software is indistinguishable from a preset
Any sufficiently advanced critique is indistinguishable from thinking
Any sufficiently advanced pastime is indistinguishable from leisure
Any sufficiently advanced artwork is indistinguishable from prestige
Any sufficiently advanced argument is indistinguishable from negation
Any sufficiently advanced meat is indistinguishable from an animal
Any sufficiently advanced weaponry is indistinguishable from violence
Any sufficiently advanced film is indistinguishable from cinema
Any sufficiently advanced geopolitical strategy is indistinguishable from self interest
Any sufficiently advanced corruption is indistinguishable from opportunism
Any sufficiently advanced platform is indistinguishable from a web-store
Any sufficiently advanced wav file is indistinguishable from music
Any sufficiently advanced jpg is indistinguishable from a tiff
Any sufficiently advanced pork product is indistinguishable from a pig
Any sufficiently advanced piano is indistinguishable from the bourgeoisie
Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from a repeatable plan
Any sufficiently advanced philosophy is indistinguishable from its thesis
Any sufficiently advanced dialectic is indistinguishable from the arc of history
Any sufficiently advanced book is indistinguishable from a long article
Any sufficiently advanced container ship is indistinguishable from its cargo
Any sufficiently advanced pandemic is indistinguishable from population control
Any sufficiently advanced pathogen is indistinguishable from its vector
Any sufficiently advanced relationship is indistinguishable from its narrative
Any sufficiently advanced ego is indistinguishable from a will to power
Any sufficiently advanced border region is indistinguishable from a threshold
Any sufficiently advanced portal is indistinguishable from a door
Any sufficiently advanced poem is indistinguishable from a sentence
Any sufficiently advanced sport is indistinguishable from a contest
Any sufficiently advanced lie is indistinguishable from swift boating
Any sufficiently advanced strategy is indistinguishable from a plan
Any sufficiently advanced synergy is indistinguishable from a connection
Any sufficiently advanced campaign is indistinguishable from coercion
Any sufficiently advanced political party is indistinguishable from a gang
Any sufficiently advanced musician is indistinguishable from an entertainer
Any sufficiently advanced tradesman is indistinguishable from a sculptor
Any sufficiently advanced human faeces is indistinguishable from canine faeces
Any sufficiently advanced error is indistinguishable from oversight
Any sufficiently advanced red herring is indistinguishable from the truth
Any sufficiently advanced truth is indistinguishable from a truism
Any sufficiently advanced cliche is indistinguishable from a classic
Any sufficiently advanced exhibition is indistinguishable from a selection
Any sufficiently advanced organism is indistinguishable from a model
Any sufficiently advanced recipe is indistinguishable from a dictum
Any sufficiently advanced dictum is indistinguishable from advice
Any sufficiently advanced advice is indistinguishable from instruction
Any sufficiently advanced instruction is indistinguishable from a proverb
Any sufficiently advanced proverb is indistinguishable from a commandment
Any sufficiently advanced commandment is indistinguishable from a law
Any sufficiently advanced law is indistinguishable from a pillar
Any sufficiently advanced pillar is indistinguishable from a foundation
Any sufficiently advanced foundation is indistinguishable from a charity
Any sufficiently advanced charity is indistinguishable from tax avoidance
Any sufficiently advanced tax avoidance is indistinguishable from liberalism
Any sufficiently advanced liberalism is indistinguishable from anarchy
X IS THE Y OF Z
Australia is the Arsehole of The World
South is underdog of hemispheres
Cartography is the genesis of abstraction
Framing is the practice of looking
Seeing is the outside of doing
Acting the making of pretending
Moving is the pace of distance
Fracking is the joke of energy
Power is the undoing of humility
Modesty is the pretence of mediocrity
Talent is the owning of potential
Immanence is the latency of quality
Quantity is the amount of things
Existence is the consequence of cognition
Consciousness is the unknown of process
Becoming is the boredom of philosophy
Wisdom is the accumulation of events
Happening is the one who leaves
Wood is the immobility of roots
Sex is the exchange of fluids
Solution is the combination of states
Territory is the assimilation of administration
Decision making is the promise of consistency
Static is the absence of broadcast
Narrative is the making of continuity
Repetition is the never of simulacra
Simulation is the always of projection
Viewing is the observance of games
Pressure is the anticipation of results
Rejection is the fruition of disinterest
Indifference is the cruelty of agency
Ability is the acknowledgment of control
Surveillance is the redaction of chance
Uncertainty is the corollary of dice
Sportsmanship is the inverse of skullduggery
Triumph is the immolation of solidarity
Temperance is the denial of exceptionalism
Nepotism is the automation of succession
Reigning is the state of purple
Royalty is the semi-permanence of class
Struggle is the formalisation of violence
Blood is the signifier of loyalty
Deference is the destroyer of disruption
Rupture is the cessation of hegemony
Ideology is the assumption of reality
Slumber is the absence of evasion
Avoidance is the anticipation of experience
Persistence is the appraisal of fatigue
Exhaustion is the result of production
Authorship is the appearance of vision
Introspection is the reflection of doubt
Paranoia is the liberation of suspicion
Evidence is the harbinger of guilt
Liability is the possibility admission
Entry is the climax of application
Reticence is the prominence of problems
Probation is the half life of internment
Release is the stockpiling of years
Revolution is the coming of reckoning
Supposing is the vagueness of inference
Deduction is the clarity of comparison
Ranking is the compiling of impression
Inquiry is the formalisation of curiosity
Hermeneutics is the interpretation of texts
Lettering is the structure of sentences
Periodisation is the price of history
Enlightenment is the parallel of money
Currency is the cousin of cryptography
Value is the worst of real estate
Property is the bane of existence
Waiting is the nether of arrival
Coming of age is the optimisation of transition
WITH GREAT X COMES GREAT Y
With great power comes great responsibility
With great relations comes great politics
With great transversality comes great confusion
With great instability comes great power vacuums
With great voids comes great force
With great gravity comes great speeches
With oration comes great lies
With great untruths comes great safety
With great facilities comes great complacency
With great apathy comes great stasis
With great monoliths comes great universality
With great grand-truths comes great linearity
With great dialectics comes great commentary
With great analysis comes great obfuscation
With great smoke and mirrors comes great dance floors
With great clubs comes great fomo
With great casual sex comes great complications
With great symptoms comes great diagnosis
With great pathologies comes great self help
With great fraudulence comes great comfort
With great insulation comes great ignorance
With great intelligence comes great advantage
With great privilege comes great threats
With great defence comes great missiles
With great space elevators comes great tourism
With great destinations comes great disappointment
With great pessimism comes great contingency
With great hadron colliders comes great art residencies
With great stipends comes great leisure time
With great recreation comes great accusations
With great statutory declarations comes great administration
With great evidence comes great questions
With statistics comes great histograms
With great numbers come great proliferation
With great inflation comes great interest
With great debt comes great crises
With great mortgages comes great derivatives
With great investment comes great dividends
With great savings comes great satisfaction
With great market penetration comes great surplus
With great extraction comes great alienation
With great labour comes great value
With great speculation comes great anxiety
With great stress comes great tense
With great tension comes great release
With great exoneration comes great trust
With great independence comes great irrelevance
With great binaries comes great division
With great walls comes great shadow
With great darkness comes great vision
With great zoom comes great distance
With great separation comes great break ups
With great love comes great uncertainty
With grea indecision comes great opportunity
With great capitalisation comes great accumulation
With great greed comes great bitterness
With great unrest comes great platitudes
With great cliches comes great subliminal messaging
With great enlightened false consciousness comes great dissonance
With great misunderstanding comes great irresolution