2021

GR/HGR investigates the temporal layers embedded within computational tools, using an Apple II Plus emulator to create works that exist simultaneously in multiple technological moments. The title references Applesoft BASIC’s graphic commands — GR for low-resolution and HGR for high-resolution graphics — foundational instructions from an era when creative computing meant direct engagement with machine constraints. The Apple II’s distinctive visual artifacts, unexpected color combinations from pixel pattern interactions, sub-pixel positioning shifts, glitches that revealed the underlying hardware architecture, become generative elements rather than limitations.

Working with this decades-old technology creates a form of temporal displacement. The AI systems, blockchain infrastructures, and quantum computers employed in contemporary practice will eventually appear as historically bounded as the Apple II does now — their once-revolutionary capabilities rendered quaint by future developments. Creative computing always involves this dual temporality: artists project forward, imagining futures these tools might enable, while simultaneously documenting a present that is already becoming past. Each computational platform carries its own aesthetic fingerprint, visible in the work it produces; GR/HGR makes this visible by reaching backward. The work suggests that understanding our present technological condition requires the temporal distance that only obsolescence can provide.