Spinner by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy is the new installment in a series of generative digital drawing works that explore metaphors used in computer networks that are taken from nature. Working from web simulation research done in the 90's, Spinner creates a series of deconstructed and hybridized spider webs, drawn over a raster scanline background. This piece is the follow up work to Brancher which used a tree-branching algorithm to present and endless cycle of growth and decay, a work presented in partnership with Sothebys in January 2024. As our world becomes ever-more digital and disembodied, technological systems employ evocative physical words from nature: trees, webs, trunks, leaves, swarms, clouds, worms, pools, etc. This suggests to us a sense of subliminal loss as the natural world recedes from view.
