CRAWL - Art exhibition on Feral File

I’ve had Travess Smalley’s newest artwork, CRAWL, running on my screen for over a day. Sometimes I watch it perform on its own as it explores what appears to be a map of a cave rendered in vibrant pixels. At other times I navigate directly with the W, A, S, and D keys, moving around using skills I’ve learned playing video games.

Spending time with CRAWL is a back-and-forth between watching and investigating. At each moment, I can see only a small piece of a larger map, but as I explore, more is revealed. I notice my speed slows down and accelerates as I pass through different colors. Sometimes the map is instantly magnified or reduced. This isn’t a game, but sometimes it feels like one; there are rules, but there’s no specific objective. Overall, there’s a lot happening, and the more time I spend here, the more I’m intrigued.

Welcome to the world of Travess Smalley, where mythic Greek labyrinths, artificial-life algorithms, and retro video games all coexist. We’ve been talking about this exhibition for over a year now, and every new meeting reveals more of the inspiration and ideas that have gone into CRAWL, as Smalley makes new references across history and fields of knowledge. On the surface, CRAWL feels like it could be part of the lineage of video games that include Rogue, NetHack, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. But underneath the crunchy pixels and vibrant colors, there’s a deep set of references to artists including John F. Simon Jr., Harold Cohen, and Terry Winters — as well as to natural and physical phenomena including the way worms create silk, superorganisms like ant and termite societies, and cloud chambers.

CRAWL is a series of 512 unique artworks, each generated from a Python-code system authored by Smalley. Each artwork is a “level” that includes different patterns, colors, and textures for viewers to explore. While the core of each artwork is a map image, the artwork is also created as the image is revealed through the explorer software. While a viewer interacts, different colors within the image trigger different events, and new sections of the map — i.e. the artwork — become visible. Each level also includes a door icon that reveals new ways to explore.

When multiple level maps are collected by a single collector, they can be “merged” together into a new artwork. For instance, if 24 individual levels are collected, those artworks can be combined into a new artwork featuring all 24 levels. After this merge, icons embedded into each level map enable the collector to move between levels.

The CRAWL software series is complemented by a series of unique relief prints called CRAWL WOODBLOCK SCREENSHOTS. While each print features an area of a generated level, the colors within the original map have been flattened and thresholded to black-and-white values. Unlike more traditional prints, where one wood block is used to create multiple prints in an edition, Smalley uses each woodblock to pull just one print, meaning each work is a unique object featuring pixels that have been transformed into cut wood, and then into ink-on-paper prints. Each CRAWL WOODBLOCK SCREENSHOTS print is a blend of code, digital fabrication, and traditional printing — making each an object that represents thousands of years of image-reproduction technology.

CRAWL expands on themes that Smalley began exploring with his legendary Pixel Rugs series (released through Hic et Nunc in spring 2021), as well as in his solo shows Number colors burn randomly (at Foxy Production in Spring 2023) and Coordinates (released on Folia in fall 2023). His unique ideas about digital-image generation and image processing underlie all of this work. With CRAWL, Smalley continues to explore digital images and unique works on paper — while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of how his images are understood and explored.