Erin Mickelson: Past Perfect Future

Erin Mickelson corresponds with a powerful algorithm—with elegant and ominous results—in Past Perfect Future. In early 2020, the Santa Fe-based artist embarked on a research-intensive journey into artificial intelligence, data-mining and how we might battle the Western biases of our online world.

Curatorial Statement

Jordan Eddy

The artist sits at her laptop, opens a particular browser window, and inputs a request. With a press of the “Enter” key, a spark ignites. A small string of text bursts from a vast nebula of language, branching out like a fresh neural pathway. The resulting paragraph is original writing, not copied but extrapolated from the words of countless authors. It offers a prediction—a fortune of sorts.

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Artist Statement

Erin Mickelson

Despite so much about human cognition being yet unknown, we are making hasty progress in creating vast technological systems that mimic the pinhole perspective we have on how the mind works. We are inadvertently building biases, misconceptions, and inaccuracies that come from this limited purview into the systems we are constructing.

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About the Artist

Erin Mickelson’s work includes printmaking, bookbinding, new and mixed media, artist books, and micro-press publishing. Mickelson’s imprint is Broken Cloud Press. She earned her BFA with a concentration in book arts at Oregon College of Art & Craft, and holds a degree in graphic design as well. Erin includes both traditional techniques as well as digital and experimental processes in her work, which is held in various private and public collections including the libraries of Seattle Art Museum, Yale University, Reed College, Baylor University, and Minneapolis College of Art & Design.

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Past Perfect Future: Exhibition Guide