Luca Darlington

Process:
Darlington uses a method of growing and presenting simulations of digital organisms through coding. The method mimics organic cell mitosis and the natural formation and growth of coral and snowflakes.

He calls the digital organisms ‘script-ures’ (referencing script, meaning how code is written, and creatures).

Numbers derived from quantum computing simulations are also incorporated as they are associated with a unique randomness. Darlington gives viewers a glimpse of what primitive computer entities might look like as they multiply, evolve, and interact within images depicting digital ecosystems - like a digital primordial soup.

Hyperpop Art:
Hyperpop Art is a critique of consumerism and late-stage capitalism. Darlington appropriates bright, plastic, and glossy aesthetics characteristic to advertising and mass media by pushing them to their aesthetic extremes: extreme minimalism to the point of uncanniness, or nauseating maximalism. He challenges viewers to confront the absurdity of consumerism by revealing its artifice.

He highlights the commodified spectacle of consumerism that pervades everyday life by employing post-irony: a deliberate ambivalence, engaging with pop culture in a way that is neither sincere nor ironic, which critiques the systems he is confronting while participating in it.

He extends these critiques towards techno-futurist hype and techno-capitalism which underlie the glossy spectacle of near-future technology.

His work is critical and cautionary, intended to draw attention to the powerful potential of computing processes and about their broader complexities and consequences.