Advisor: Jason Paradis

Generation Z is the first group of adults who have grown up with digital screens as memory timestamps connecting them back to their early years. Instead of having impressions from their parents or other family members to connect them back to their youth, they have their first computers uphold that role. This cannot be said for any other generation before this. They can reflect on the role technology has in their lives but it will never hold the same position of parenthood. There was a distance between my childhood-self and my family. It caused me to form an attachment to my computer as a familial figure. This is a characteristic of Generation Z’s upbringing with technology. I view the loading screen as a lullaby, my first user name picture as my first baby picture. A computer is a binky and a surrogate mother to the 2000’s child. Through my exhibition, User Name, I investigate the parental position of technology in my personal life and how it affects my early memories; altering what they look like. Alternatively, I find myself forgetting the impressions my family had on me growing up and in turn realize I was taught love, companionship, and pain, through my computer. I manifest these teachings through the instinctual presence of my personal nostalgia in the painted form.

Title: Screening, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 30×40 inches, Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

The first painting in my exhibition is titled, Screening. In it I depict my family’s first computer. Every Windows PC (‘personal computer’) came with the classic grass background. Filled with green rolling hills, bright blue hues and overly white clouds. The screen felt too real, more real than the grass and sky outside my window. I mimic the classic screensaver, creating it from memory and without any reference. In the painting it almost holds the same value it does when on a computer screen, it acts as the background. Yet, I argue its original position and make it a focal point on purpose, by having it take up most of the visible space on the canvas. It is void of any icons and cursors and takes on new meaning as something beautiful and serene, rather than a basic loading background screen. I place a computer inside of the blue sky landscape, instead of the other way around, where it is naturally supposed to be. By switching those two positions I am stating that the back screen holds more power than the computer itself. The moments inside the computer are what I delve into throughout my exhibition, User Name. These are more valuable than the computer itself. What is inside of it, is what matters to me.

Detail of Screening

I begin to introduce the influence of PC game culture in this work. Games strictly played on a home computer have an important role of comfort and escape within my childhood. I was never allowed an Xbox or a PlayStation as a kid, so instead I had to turn to games that came on discs, meant to be inserted and played on computers. I had a strong desire to be a part of a digital world. Humongous Entertainment created many early children’s computer games in the 1990’s and 2000’s. I represent a few of them throughout my series of work. In Screening, I specifically focus on my time spent playing Putt Putt Saves the Zoo. The story follows Putt Putt, a purple car, on an adventure to save the zoo. It focuses on environmentalism and the appreciation of wildlife. It uses vibrant colors, characters with large eyes and captivating music to enthrall the audience and engage the player. It was the first interactive game I played where the main character talked back to you. I became quite attached to Putt Putt. He took me on adventures and showed me circuses, time travel, and zoo’s filled with every animal. I never went anywhere with my family growing up. This game allowed me to discover places and worlds outside of my own familial landscape.

In the journey of unearthing the melancholic feelings I have towards my youth, these paintings become a conversation between my younger-self and the woman I am today. This conversation is shown through Putt Putts console being represented on the bottom of the canvas. The console is on the screen the entire time you play through the game. It never leaves and acts as a guiding factor through the world of Putt Putt. The console is an ever-present being in the game, just as the longing I have for recollection is innately the driving force that pushes me to understand myself. I ache to remember my past and am saddened when I cannot find anything there. My memories do not match those of my friends or even my family members. I feel as if there is nothing there. My paintings aid in my meditation and help create substantial moments of memory. By recreating the game’s interfaces I begin to see the child I was.

Detail of Screening

The dialogue continues as my older-self begins to bring forth my time spent on Youtube, memorizing lyrics from songs I was obsessed with on the radio. When I wasn’t spending time online, I was in the car quite frequently. Coming from a family of seven where each of us played sports, I existed in a car both physically in the real world and in my digital escape with Putt Putt. Beneath the clouds, above the computer screen, is a window that is blurred. It is a screenshot or ‘still’ of my old Tumblr page. Tumblr is an online interface meant to connect people socially through written- or picture-centered posts. It is blurred and out of vision because my childhood-self urges me to push away the experiences I had online as a teenager. The harshness that follows innocence. The star below outshines the harshness by being vibrant and candylike. Stars are a motif of my youth, for I spent much of my nights looking up when the stars were brightest. By adding the star into the digital world of my memory-scape, it keeps me safe from the realities behind the clouds. Morphing together aspects of the real world and the digital world showcases who I am at my center. I am one who exists in both of these spaces and it is a result of my youth. Creating the two as one within the canvas represents a self-portrait, a 2000’s child. A child who is not only of the earth but of the expanding digital universe. The star is an anchor to the real world. A child needs one when most of their time is spent behind the screen, it is the green light across the river.

Title: Keyboard, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 12×36 inches, Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

In Keyboard, I create the manifestation of the physical nature of my relationship with computers. The keyboard is a necessary item and a vital piece in the conversation between human and machine. I could only interact with the computer using a keyboard. It became my interpreter, my link to endless knowledge and creativity. Without it I would be unable to create this body of work. I wanted to pay homage to its importance in my life. Instead of staying true to the muted black and gray moggy colors that invade tech spaces, I crafted it to fit the colors that I saw the most growing up. My room was bubblegum pink and eventually was covered by soft purples. My choice in vibrancy and depth when it came to the color in Keyboard was not random but specific to my adolescence. This is the keyboard I saw and used growing up. Just as my room started pink and became purple, I overlaid the hues in the exact same way. Pink was the base of my bedroom, it is the base of this painting and no matter what you put on top, it always sneaks through.

Detail of Keyboard

Title: Screen 02, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 20×24 inches, Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

The next painting in the series, Screen 02, is one of the two liminal screen spaces. I created a physical work of a virtual environment that serves the purpose of the in-between states of conversation with my two selves, the child and the adult. It stands as an intermediate space between the unfixed and the permanent visuals of what I can retain as memory. The background is a screen with a grid overlay, allowing me to experiment with what goes inside of it. I am able to explore the identities of the objects and characters I put in the grid’s presence. They exist in the grid and are confined to that area. This reflects how the act of bringing forth my life as a kid stays in confines and is restricted to what it was. Liminal spaces allow uncomfortability to take residence.

I use three focal points in Screen 02, to challenge the uncertainty of the grid space. The three points are an anchor used to focus the eye of the viewer. The CD in the center is the first point, Pajama Sam falling down a spiral in the left corner is the second and, the third point is my old CD player that I carried with me everywhere. By focusing on one of these three positions the grid dissolves into the background. The viewer forgets the unpredictability the grid implies. I forget the past that remains hidden and out of view. My childhood-self urges me to remember only the items in focus instead of the parts I cannot fill in fully.

The CD is a literal recreation of the 2000’s 3D game, M&M’s The Lost Formulas. This is the first game they ever released for the franchise, available on both Windows and Macintosh computers. The game’s premise involves both Red and Yellow M&M going on vacation. Yellow left the mini M&M’s in charge and it caused chaos. The formulas got lost and all the robot machines in the factory went rogue. As Yellow, you venture back to the factory to put everything back together. M&M’s was the only game I played with my siblings growing up. It was the one thing we all had in common. The game is out of print and can only be found on Ebay, where CD’s of it are scratched and in terrible condition. I have not played it in over 10 years and by recreating the CD in perfect condition I attempt to fool myself into believing that there is a possibility of its resurgence in my life. I memorialize it infinitely in the canvas as a playable game, instead of how it exists in the real world. It is a dead game, ready to be forgotten by the ones who created it. I rebuke that statement visually by allowing the CD to act as a shrine to its greatness.

Detail of Screen 02

Pajama Sam is another game from the franchise I focused on in Screening. It exists in the same universe as Putt Putt. There are many Pajama Sam games yet, I took a scene from the first release. A game that focuses on a child character named Sam. He only wears pajamas and he has lost his socks. At the beginning of the journey you get sent down into a winding portal under Sam’s bed. I depict this in Screen 02. That moment in the game has been burned into me since I played it all those years ago. It is the moment you decide as a player to go along with him on the journey. Sam is not afraid of anything. He battles the darkness inside closets and the creeping monsters that exist under beds. He taught me how to not be afraid and that I could do anything even if all I wore were pajamas. My childhood-self speaks to me through his voice. Fear that I abandoned in my youth has found me again in my adulthood and I find it difficult to shake. By painting Sam with my hands that have grown and eyes that see more than they did before, I wonder if he remembers me. Would he see my youth and ask me to dive under the bed in search of socks or would he see the fear that has taken its place? I put him inside the swirling tunnel to see if he will take the adult version of me with him. I was excited to recreate him and the iconic red cape and blue pajamas that he wears. The swirling tunnel toned deep blue and the grid above a burnt orange, mimic Pajama Sam’s classic look within the liminal space. I put Pajama Sam everywhere waiting expectantly for an invitation back into his world.

Title: Screen 01, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 18×24 inches, Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Screen 01, the second liminal space in the series, stands as the full crossover into the digital world. I accurately represent the original ‘play’ screen from M&M’s The Lost Formula game, the screen where you click play to start the game. All of the buttons and the electric title sign are included. The neon green and bursting with slime-like-texture background is a part of one of the levels included in the 3D game. This is the first painting in the series that focuses on one singular game, one premise. The fully immersive digital plane is shown here. There is no confusion or connection to the reality of forgotten memories or the physical world. This specific game is the one I played the most. I had multiple versions on CD that traveled with me to school, to friends houses, and back home. The screen followed me everywhere, completing the game and restarting felt like it was a part of my biology. The colors are imprinted into me.

Detail of Screen 01

The process of creating this piece forced me to collide with my childhood-self. Instead of conversing back and forth, we were sitting inside her boundary; inside the window. The past and present were together in a way where I felt beneath the surface of what I was before. The title sequence in the center of Screen 01 allows for a fully immersive experience for anyone who has also played a part in this game. I strive to give the viewer the ability to exist in the virtual world of childhood I have created. Where they can connect the role technology has played in their lives, whether it be a parent, a friend, or an enemy.

Title: Pajamas, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16×20 inches, Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

As the series continues into the fully immersed digital plane, I begin to extract elements of early Window’s design into my work. A glitch of screens colliding and moving into one another becomes an ensemble of icons and arrows. The focal point in Pajamas is a question window. These windows would pop up giving the viewer a separate space on the display screen to look at and it would ask if the user wanted to trust the computer.

Detail of Pajamas

Instead of putting in the usual question, it is open with a quote from Pajama Sam inside. “I’m wearing Pajamas, is that enough?” This line struck me while I was doing research again into all of the games I am representing. I continue to see myself in Pajama Sam and I allow the question to hang inside the canvas instead of my head. When combating the fear of adulthood, questions of anxiety come forth and Pajama Sam was never afraid. He stands as a representation of who I was as a kid. I am not asking the viewer, nor even my childhood-self, the question. In Pajamas, I have fully crossed over into the digital plane and I am scared. I ask the woman I am today and hope her answer will pull me out.

The painting is lost and broken because of where the conversation has led. My present-self is no longer comfortable in the digital scape that my younger version has invited me back into. I become confused and the immersion that felt so bright before is now clouded and has gone grayscale. The multiple recreations of the mouse cursor are meant to aid the viewer in feeling like there is nowhere to go. There’s no options bar, nothing is clickable, it is everywhere yet doing nothing but moving frantically. Just as I am now trapped in the digital-scape, the cursors are my way of attempting to find a way out. I do not want to answer the question. There is a part of the adult-version of myself that will answer incorrectly and I will be trapped in the digital escape of my childhood forever.

Title: Untitled, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 8×10 inches, Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Untitled, is the smallest piece in the series. It is meant to hone the viewer in. By translating a digital image into a painting I aim to offer a new scene, a different connection to the Windows screen. I replicated Microsoft Paint, originally released in 1985. It existed as an early graphics editor. Displayed in its earlier context window. MS Paint has been updated and changed. For those who miss the original, as of this writing, Jspaint.app has it available. I enjoy the graphic element of early
Microsoft interfaces and the concept of the recreation of digital graphics. It stands as a commentary on the way the physical interacts with the digital in a quiet and soft way. I bring back the pinks used in Keyboard, to represent how the tension of fully falling into the digital liminal scene, shown in the previous piece, causes my present-self to cling back to the physical. It is searching for the tangible and real, just like the keyboard is something you can touch. The pinks in this series focuses on the plane of reality that exists outside of the glass screen.

Title: Files Screen, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16×20 inches, Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

The conversation comes to a close with my final piece in the series, Files Screen. An empty window with no name, an untitled file paired with the old game Snood acting as its background. Snood is one of the most distant memories I have. I can’t place the game at any specific age or time or day. It feels like a lost file that I have remnants of. Like most of my early memories, it is faded, a little confused and empty.

The characters included are all from Snood, a puzzle where you shoot Snoods at other Snoods that look like the Snood you are shooting. There is simplicity in the game, sounds of easiness but it is one that you can find yourself losing quite often. If there are no pairs or a Snood that exists in the gun but not on your screen, you lose. The Snoods can keep growing and overwhelm the whole game. You win by eliminating groups of matching threes. The harsh cross between the blue and red act as another call towards Pajama Sam’s ensemble of an outfit. This time buried beneath a memory that I cannot quite place. A file I cannot find. I allowed myself to act unfinished inside of the realm of my digital childhood. As I leave the conversation behind I end it with ease, familiarity and characters fading behind the emptiness of a file that will never be found.

The conversation between my younger-self and my adult-self has led me to remember the vibrancy of my digital childhood. Yet, the realizations of why I had to live in that world become more present than they were before. User Name, originally a series of paintings meant to memorialize my youth, have become a long finger pointed towards the gaps where a family should have stood. I distanced myself and immersed my whole body into a plane that only exists when plugged in. As I broke down the layers of interfaces and screens I found myself alone. I did connect to my younger-self and she reminded me of moments that I believed to be forgotten and for that I thank her. She also attempted to take me back with her, deep into the isolation of my childhood. I aspire for my paintings to give her a place to reside in peacefully. A place to play freely without distraction and without fear. I began this body of work to remember her and remember I have. As I ripped into the role the computer had in my childhood, I realized it was neither a parent nor a friend but an embodiment of my loneliness.