Andrew Elijah Edwards

artist

Artist Statement

Within and between all things lies a dialogue, silently communicating within a realm beyond language. My work is a voyage through this space, a conversation in a tongue without words.

I am traversing a dreamscape of unknown lands, magical rituals, emergent creative phenomena, and first contact. These explorations ride a hidden language, delicately entwined within everything and expressed through the playful and the sublime.

My creative palette embraces both the digital and the physical. Through animated virtual worlds and bodily expression via dance and theatrical performance, I explore the intersection of performance, movement, and the virtual.

My explorations echo humanity's evolving relationship with simulation and the virtual world, a testament to our love affair with the fabricated and the fantastical. Through explorations with machine learning, “artificial intelligence,” and the cresting wave of new digital practices, my processes develop through explorations within emerging computational realms via humanity’s evolving relationship with simulation and the virtual imaginal.

The landscape of simulation, simulacra, and virtual space calls me to fractally explore my twinkling fascination with consciousness, subjectivity, and the blurred lines separating self from the other. The frame of the virtual screen, the act of simulating reality through pixels, video recording in binary, and mathematically generating digital intelligence, are ways of seeing and evolving our own conscious subjectivity, thoughts, and communication in order to understand our ourselves while simultaneously maniupla ingand clarifying the lens of our awareness.

Raised in New Jersey, my creative journey led me to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I studied art and experimental digital media with Steina and Woody Vasulka through the vibrant experimental media scene Santa Fe emitted, later to further hone my craft at the University of Denver, receiving an MFA in Emergent Digital Practices in 2015 while working at the Denver Art Museum developing and caretaking New Media exhibitions.

Post-graduation, I relocated to Maine. Through a range of platforms, I channel my fascination with existence and imagination into facilitating a growth environment for people of all ages and abilities to explore channeling the imaginal; teaching a suite of digital literacy and creative toolsets as Adjunct Professor in the Communications and New Media department of SMCC in South Portland and through community projects like IMAGINARIUM, an education program that guides groups of young adults and children through story creation, animation, world building, green-screen video performance, prop and set building, stage performance, and channeling the power of imagination.