The Arduous Process Of Simmons & Burke

The digital artists scour the web for source material, using up to 5,000 images in one collage.

Dan Gould Dan Gould on September 23, 2010.

A new Wired article looks at the arduous process of digital collage artists Simmons & Burke (who we’ve covered previously here). One of the pieces from their upcoming exhibition, If Not Winter uses an astounding 5,000 images sourced from Google image searches, and a host of other online sources.

Wired reports:

Besides their more systematic searches, Simmons & Burke say they also pursue random tangents on a whim: “The real way that we ‘find things’ is what comes along the way: What else does that birdwatcher have in his Flickr account? Most of the time that’s the good stuff. ”

The artists cite “cultural anxiety and paranoia, media sensationalism and fringe culture, celebrity worship and sacred geometry” as thematic jumping-off points for their work.

“All of those ideas floating around the work didn’t ever really elucidate the process as much as the idea of attempting to make a collage that houses over 5,000 images and audio samples,” they said. “Our process takes so long with such an absurd amount of labor that the pieces are constantly shifting. It comes down to more of a psychological space that we’re creating, where quotation, hybridization and mutation are the order. Sometimes we’ll use repetition or pattern as a kind of formal strategy to carve out spaces and build perspective — or just to balance out the madness.”

Simmons & Burke

Wired: “Artists Grab 5,000 Web Images for 1 Massive Collage”