David Sullivan Fugitive Emissions

Fugitive Emissions is an installation of large-scale animated paintings with sound that poetically probes the hidden life of petrochemical production. In these animations, abstract gestural brushstrokes collide with the realism of 3d computer graphics. These moving paintings are virtual worlds that blur the distinction between technology and biology. The dependence of our ways of life, especially along the gulf coast, on petrochemical processing and the effects of this production on living systems are the inspiration for this work.

Oil spills are a highly visible symptom of a much broader, complicated relationship between the petrochemical industry and the communities along the Gulf. It is the invisible processes involved in the creation of our lifestyles, hidden behind mysterious and silently remote edifices that these animations explore. These products and byproducts of technology change our external as well as internal landscapes. The industrial plants, their emissions, and affected organs dissolve into one. Like some will-o-the-wisp, seen dimly through the humidity, the objects drip in a slowly evolving miasma.