Tyler H

In Adam Jeppesen’s triptych Tyler H, large ominous eyes slowly appear from a scattering of random marks and tones. The identity of Tyler H is reduced to a set of eyes, printed from photogravure plates, and overlaid with incidental textures from the backside of disused etching plates. The resulting three-part image is not clearly defined but heavily blurred, yet we recognize a face out of the abstraction. Jeppesen encourages the human tendency to seek meaning in randomness.
The print is related to a series of transitory portraits titled Amos, which Adam Jeppesen has developed under the sun on plant-dyed paper. The portraits stem from an algorithm with a dataset based on millions of images uploaded to the Internet. The seeing eyes of Tyler H do not belong to an actual person. Jeppesen’s process of creating seductively beautiful images using handmade, natural materials and etching techniques, obscures the otherwise sinister implications of their source. By building a bridge between the synthetic and the natural, Adam Jeppesen draws attention to the numerous existing connections between humans and artificial intelligence technology and how these algorithms have infiltrated everyday life, at times without our knowledge.