The Shape [2025]

"The Shape" is an ongoing collaborative work, a conceptual painting that encourages participants to consider a simple prompt: "What is the Shape of the Internet?"

Inspired by the obsessive queries of "Gentry", a character in William Gibson's novel Mona Lisa Overdrive who is consistently preoccupied with trying to discover the shape of cyberspace, I began to investigate similar themes. Does the Internet have a shape? Is the shape static, or does it constantly change? Can it be described or portrayed in a singular image, or is something else required to capture all of its dimensions? The internet, being a hyper-shared space, creates spaces for discussion and shared interests, but the forms that those collaborative spaces take are often taken completely for granted. As an experiment, I wanted to bring this issue to a physical shared space to see what images might result. I was not so much concerned with whether or not "The Shape" would manifest itself (decades of collaborative drawing and painting guaranteed a result of some kind) but rather how people might interact with it. Would they bring specific content from their corner of 'the net', or would it be more of a macroscopic exploration involving abstraction? What I found was a combination or hybrid - interestingly, most who engaged with the canvas were drawn to painting relatable symbols or metaphorical images, including trees and natural objects, spiritual symbols, graphics from popular culture (not necessarily the Internet), and other miscellaneous or personal quips. After some time, the image began to resemble many graphical representations that have been generated by computer scientists to describe the shapes and forms the distribution of information creates across the Internet. The networks of data and flowing from one side of the canvas to the other, branching organically from one topic or idea to another, becoming more and more layered until a 'shape' had, indeed, revealed itself.

This work was created with the collaborative efforts of the residents of Baltimore City -

Thank You To Everyone Who Participated In The Creation Of The Shape!