Alan Warburton is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the use of software in contemporary culture. Often manifesting in experimental CGI films, Warburton’s work is inspired by the idea of “excavating the fertile ground of the synthetic image” to address themes of digital labour, simulation, gender and representation.
Warburton creates critical video essays that reflect on the possibility of CGI as an experimental filmmaking medium. Spectacle, Speculation, Spam (2016) discusses commercial versus artistic approaches to animation filmmaking. Another critical film Goodbye Uncanny Valley (2017) asks ‘what’s next?’ now that we’re at the point where artists can conjure almost anything with software.
Homo Economicus (2018-) is an ongoing project exploring the areas of masculinity, power, queerness and technology. A recent instalment of this entitled Golem took place at King’s College London’s ‘3 Days of Fat’ event where Warburton interviewed 50 men about the parts of their body they would most like to change and transposed it live onto a virtual male body, exploring the space between the computational and human worlds.