I recently found myself processing photographs until they lost any resemblance to the original. By repeatedly combining the output of various basic processes they soon became a mixture of noise, compression artifacts, and colours.

But eventually, a shape or pleasing pattern would emerge from the mess and I could start being more selective with the processing to try and encourage complementary features and structure within an image.

Soft glowing pools of magenta, blue, green, and red on black, broken by dark speckled marks that suggest a face in profile.
2405

2405 (above) is a good example of the process; it’s one of my favourites, but I don’t know what it started as, and have no way to reproduce it.

The destructive nature of these processes was a conscious choice. I’m used to working in a world where everything is undoable, and no changes are lost. It’s freeing to work with no path back to earlier versions. While searching for patterns it almost doesn’t matter what you do, only that you do something. All changes have potential.

A bright yellow and red diagonal glow crossed by thin light streaks, fading to dark red at the edges.
0420
Grainy white patches on black that look like a grimacing face with two eyes and an open mouth.
9845

Starting with no plan or theme in mind, whatever finally emerges from the noise is a culmination of all the things I think I’ve seen in the chance arrangement of some pixels.

This is something I will continue to explore.

A blurred black and white macro texture with a glittering dark ridge running diagonally across it.
9862

Some of these will end up on flickr when there’s more of a collection.