I create paintings as artifacts of society’s initial reluctance to trust in the promise of technology. Our faith in tech is connected to science, which can be good for humanity—see, for example, the ICU portraits of patients on life support machines. However, it’s also tied to a vision that is not always good: A vision of tech magically providing us with complete automation, effortless power, and eventually, some form of immortality free from suffering.

Through a series of instructional videos, my persona, Professor Fitzgerald teaches us how to build our own immortalizing devices, despite continually injuring himself with power tools. It is an allegory of how much harm can be caused by accelerating our innovations without sufficient regard for the risks involved; of a vision of enriching and prolonging our lives, while losing aspects of our humanity in the process. I dispose of the physical inventions after each video and transform this vision into large-scale, vanitas still life paintings.