Throws Left, from the series "A History of Graph Paper"

John Houck creates works that simultaneously embrace and resist digital technology through the use of repetitive processes. To make Throws Left Houck began with a childhood artifact—a box of baseball cards—that for him served as a tool for exploring memory outside of psychoanalysis. The artist first photographed the cards and their box in the manner of a commercial studio arrangement. He then used the resulting print as the backdrop for a new image of the same objects, repeating this process several times while modifying the composition or object in each iteration. The final image appears collaged or digitally altered but is in fact free of any such interventions. Instead, the spatially puzzling, multilayered composition reflects the idea that memory is rarely a product of systematized facts or data.