Joe Hamilton, 2015
Moving through Indirect Flights reflects moving through our ever-changing modern world. Combining familiar elements into ways that render them uncanny and no longer wholly recognizable. Separate elements and individual chunks are recognizable as objects but they are taken out of their original context and scrambled leading to a kind of distortion and confusion. A viewer can clearly identify that they are moving across pictures of the earth, but where and from when remains a mystery. Though the piece loops images around, there is so much on screen it can be hard to tell and feel for the user like a truly infinite space. The creator, Joe Hamilton, provides no written instructions on the page, instead curiosity directs the user as to how they interact with the piece. Indirect Flights works as a piece of art when it is still, but it is when the user decides to explore that the piece’s meaning truly becomes evident. The more one scrolls, drags, or clicks around the more questions emerge, but no answers are provided. A piece as dynamic and interactive as this can only exist online, and its power and meaning draw from the user’s familiarity with other parts of the internet and shared experiences with technology.