Soft Encounters

Jason Ting’s Soft Encounters (2022) is a generative moving image work created using code. Infinitely changing over time, the work is a warm, delicate, and peaceful meditation on past memories, the passage of time, and hope for the future.

At the outset, the texture of the work resembles slow-moving clouds. Taking a one-pixel-wide slice from this texture and stretching it vertically, Ting conjures a glimmering spectrum. Ting then processes the work through a secondary algorithm, bringing about the work’s soft, glowing effect, in which light appears to emanate from each slice of color.