The treachery of [digital] images.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

This is not a pipe.
Nor is it a photo of a pipe.
Or a painting of a pipe.
It is not a drawing of a pipe.
Or a print of a pipe.
There is no canvas.
There are no pigments.
or oil to suspend them in.
No ink. No paper. No stone.
No frame.
No Brushes.

This is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe.
A digital image.
A sequence of 1's and 0's that your computer decodes into color and form.
It is a file that I have uploaded to the internet so that you may download it.
A sequence of binary that I have transfered to a server so that it may be called onto your computer through TCP/IP.
It is 1's and 0's that were created with a program that is 1's and 0's.
Mathematically defined ramps on mathmatically defined curves.
It has no physical counterpart.
No frame. No canvas. No pigment.

Perhaps one day it will be removed from this site.
From every site.
From everywhere.
From the servers that transported it to you.
From the hard drives that stored it.
This form of Digital Erosion will destroy it more completely than a flood could ever destroy a painting.
More completely than an earthquake could ever destroy a fresco.
Or acid rain could destroy a statue.

The magnetic fields that stored it will randomize.
The bits and bytes; pixels and curves will be lost forever.
It will vanish with no trace that it ever even existed.
Can it be said to have existed at all?
Does it even really exist now?

Ceci n'est pas ...anything?


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Well, it's finally finished. I feel like I've been working on this for forever!
It feels good to finish it though. This is by far the most complete piece of fine art I've made in a very long time. Maybe even ever.

Nothing but curves and procedural textures.
It's all math!

Done completely in Maya 7.0