‘PFP’ (Profile Picture) is a long-running series made using neural nets and digital painting, exploring the splintering of identity in digital environments.
We live in an age where identity can be mass-produced - copied, pasted and altered instantaneously. Our online selves change to reflect the way we want to be seen and also how others see us. They are ‘I’ and also digital media constructs, something elastic between the ‘I’ and other.
The artworks are made by breeding game characters into separate game environment using neural nets, multiple times. The process of merging character and environment produces digital artefacts, glitches which are magnified and repeated. The artefacts form the basis of the composition, caught between character and environment, somewhere in the middle of the neural net’s process of gradient descent. Additive processes like layering, masking and digital painting are also used.
We live in an age where identity can be mass-produced - copied, pasted and altered instantaneously. Our online selves change to reflect the way we want to be seen and also how others see us. They are ‘I’ and also digital media constructs, something elastic between the ‘I’ and other.
The artworks are made by breeding game characters into separate game environment using neural nets, multiple times. The process of merging character and environment produces digital artefacts, glitches which are magnified and repeated. The artefacts form the basis of the composition, caught between character and environment, somewhere in the middle of the neural net’s process of gradient descent. Additive processes like layering, masking and digital painting are also used.
New variations of the PFP series were created in response to the launch of Pantone sLABS ‘metaverse-ready’ colour palette. The synthetic characters are bred into separate synthetic environments using neural nets, then traced by hand, but these PFPs incorporate the PANTONE sLABS palette.
![]()
