Edition of 3 of 8

Pigment Ink on sustainable bamboo Awagami washi paper

118 x 84 cm (46.46 x 33.07 in)

In Zeno’s Aquarium, penguins swim in towards the centre, stingrays swim towards the perimeter. The stingrays, heading towards infinity, will never reach their destination, always having to cross the halfway mark as they halve in size. The penguins are luckier, their brush with infinity is lost in the past, having broken free, they rapidly double in size to reach the centre successfully.

Zeno’s paradox states that it is impossible to reach one’s destination, as you must always cross the halfway mark of the distance left. In practice, this distance becomes infinitesimally small. Similarly, in making the print there is a distance where the image becomes smaller than the pixels, and the limit, to all intents and purpose, has been reached.

Designing the print on software, with infinite zoom, it is easy to get lost and spend hours within the region of a few pixels, now I work mathematically to determine at which point one creature becomes one pixel, and stop at that point. The limit boundary is calculated geometrically so that is accurate, in between it is filled with the average colour of the pixels of the tiles.