Will Peck

Will Peck (*1991)’s artistic practice focuses on the extended use of common technology and artificially intelligent machines. The artist observes and records processes or events that are passing beyond the intended functions of the devices used, creating autonomous time-based acts. He explores the potentiality of those non-human acts, seeking to uncover a private and intimate language of a machine. His practice encompasses drawings, scans, prints, and video.

 

In his recent work, Will Peck has been exploring the functionality of everyday artificially intelligent machines, highlighting and merging the collaborative dialogue between humans and machines through visual interplays – the artist’s own actions and the algorithmic decision making of cell phones, scanners and computer mice.  For instance, in his “Salt Drop Drawings” series, Will Peck documents samples of seawater interacting with the electric field surrounding a smartphone screen. In those works, a touchscreen registers the saltiness of the water as if it were a finger. By using software on the device, the conductivity of seawater makes a series of line drawings. The artist states that “I see my work as a matter of working with common tools towards lyrical ends”.

 

Will Peck lives and works in London, United Kingdom. He is a graduate of the London Metropolitan University (2011 - 2014) and received his M.F.A. from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2017. He has been exhibiting in Japan, the Netherland, Finland and the UK and has been the recipient of numerous international artist residencies. In 2021 he took part in the artist residency programme of the prestigious Villa Lena in Italy, where he first started working on his “Night Scans” series. The exhibition with the eponymous title is Will Peck’s inaugurating solo show with HELDENREIZER Contemporary.