CHROMAPhoto Series
202411 Artworks

The titles of works from the CHROMA series—NRZ, MADI, Byte, Interface, MDB-XYZ, Key, Bit, DAT, Code, Byte, Channel Status, MSB—refer to the OG terms of digital engineering that have endured over the course of digital evolution. In a span of a half-century, our audiovisual expectations have evolved from VHS to HD, yet these terms are a sort of psychogeography of the road travelled. In her preceding series, GLITZCH, Alia Ali addresses the fluidity and tension between organic and digital ecosystems. With CHROMA, she has fully entered the digital universe, using only saturated color and line to define the tension between two-dimensional and three-dimensional imagery.

In her ongoing project of developing the Yemeni Futurit Archive, Ali now translates organic fabric into code; the figures in these images transcend their three-dimensional human form to emerge from—or disappear into—a flat linear system. The figure is frozen, suspended in a chromatic landscape limited to two or three highly-saturated colors, synchronizing tension between bi-dimensional and depth perception, between human and avatar.

The tension is palpable. Color becomes sound—echoing, vibrating, oscillating—as complementary or neon hues oppose and interact.

The artist defines the title of the series as “the pureness of color and its freedom from the binaries of white and black”. While her earlier works often involve opposition of pattern and color, here the imagery is stripped down to a limited palette, in a strict grid of horizontality or verticality. Not unlike Josef Albers’ exercises in chromatic theory, CHROMA proposes a contradiction of visual contexts produced in a single spatial situation; flatness and depth are confounded in the eyes of the viewer, who becomes an active participant in the process.

The viewer is also invited to consider the timeline of our collective digital experience, from their own frame of reference. Since the creation of the internet (less than 50 years ago!), the turnover of digital-based products has increased exponentially. Compact discs (CDs) also arrived in the early 1980s, marking the shift from analog to digital recordings. Gone were the vinyls and cassette tapes that had defined the evolution of 20th century music.

HD TV was introduced about fifteen years later, becoming mainstream around 2006. Our consumer habits have undergone—and continue to undergo—such rapid adaptation that we can mark the actual passage of time through digital products: cds, iPods, Blackberry (2002). The first iPhone was released in 2007 - less than twenty years ago. Most people actually associate moments in their lives with the digital accessories, from iPods to Apple watches to VR headsets. Today we have left behind the post-Internet and mobile eras to arrive at the generative AI era, with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

Obsolescence is always just around the corner. The titles of the CHROMA series remind us that while every new invention relegates its predecessors to the recycling bin, some concepts remain, references to a past that was once the future.

Did we lose something along the way? The resonance of vinyl recordings, for example, is considered by some to be a superior listening experience than clean, antiseptic digital renderings. Do you associate significant moments in your life with this timeline? When did you actually begin to stream movies rather than go to the cinema? What was your first AI conversation?

NRZ refers to non-return-to-zero, an early encoding system still in use today for high-speed data transmission (Ethernet, local area networks). The bicolor image—saturated lime green and electric blue—introduces the opposition of color and vertical/horizontal lines, referencing this exquisitely simple binary code that contains infinite possibility of information.

In the works KEY (a field used to sort data), DAT (digital audio tape) and BIT (smallest unit of data), the images go beyond the trickery of color perception to actually repurpose information. The horizontal lines that define the mid-section of the figure dissipate into the surrounding atmosphere, creating perception disturbance on a more existential level. Is the figure real? Is this a composite image? Here the artist recomposes digital information to question solidity, or permanence.

MADI (Multichannel Audio Digital Interface) and CHANNEL STATUS are associated with sound, and these two works of the series combine the senses through discordance. There is a synesthetic perception of audio in the vibration of color. Three colors are juxtaposed to appear to be four, with the addition of a distinct line separation that redefines its bordering color.

If color is harmony and timbre in musical composition, does texture evoke rhythm? In these two works, there is a sense of shift in texture, though all fabrics are of the same composition. These two works share a similar rhythmic device, yet the entire series lends itself to synesthetic perception, creating an interface between light waves perceived by the eye and vibrations translated by the ear into electrical impulses based on pitch and volume.

We are at the constant interface of technology and human perception, defining ourselves by our capacity to adapt and evolve at pace with modern invention.

- Kristi Ann Jones

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1. Josef Albers (1888–-1976) was one of the most influential painters of the twentieth century. His career, which bridged European and American modernism, consisted mainly of a tightly focused investigation into the perceptual properties of color and spatial relationships. Working with simple geometric forms, Albers sought to produce the effects of chromatic interaction, in which the visual perception of a color is affected by those adjacent to it. https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2023/exceptional-works-josef-albers

2. Apple has released 46 iPhone models in 18 years.

3. “For us, color is a powerful model system that reveals clues to how the mind and brain work.  How does the brain organize and categorize color? What makes us think one color is more similar to another?” Bevil Conway, Ph.D., Earl, Lesley. “Envision Color: Activity Patterns in the Brain Are Specific to the Color You See.” National Institutes of Health (NIH), 16 Nov. 2020, www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/envision-color-activity-patterns-brain-are-specific-color-you-see.