Extreme Learning Machines (ELMs) aim to break the barriers between conventional artificial learning techniques and biological learning mechanisms. ELM systems and theories call for designs based upon the human nervous system that capture the intuitive efficiency and essence of brain learning. ELM learning capacity is based on algorithms that mimic, reproduce and replicate experience. This technology creates a machine system that is not programmed but rather learns to learn, and requires minimal human intervention.
Costa’s practice is very much a processed-based labor. Works absorb, mimic and inevitably humanize the visual language made possible by machine and imaging software. Compositions attempt to recreate the texture of a reality that has widened and opened via our ever-present screens and devices – a reality where the digitally constructed and altered image imposes itself on our notions and understandings of space, place, intimacy and self. Temporal experience now unfolds in a state of constant flux, shifting between a physical reality, and the seduction and distraction of the more desirable illusions and versions constantly presented, fabricated and delivered through our screens.
Recent works physically mimic this digital and retouched reality by using in-camera techniques, cut paper and studio constructions to reflect a condition in which identity, space and desire are fluid from one moment to the next, and where everything one wants is available, at any moment, forever. Objects, symbols and logos of mass production and consumption become vehicles for transcendence as they are re-contextualized, reshaped and abstracted just enough to be simultaneously melancholic and sublime.
BIO
Joseph Desler Costa is a photographer living in Brooklyn, NY and Florence, Italy. He holds degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder (BA) as well as ICP Bard College (MFA), and attended the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) in Cuba. Costa has exhibited his pictures and films at venues including Baxter St. Camera Club of New York, Arsenale di Venezia, Newspace Center for Photography and Mana Contemporary. He has recently had solo exhibitions at the International Center of Photography and BDP Project Space (Jersey City). Costa’s work will also be featured in the upcoming 2015 Lianzhou Foto Festival this autumn in China.
Costa has published several artists books, including Dedications_Calibrations (Silent Face Projects, 2014) and Fruit and Buns (Self-Published, 2014). His work has featured on a number of blogs as well as in digital and print publications including The New York Times, Self Publish Be Happy, VICE, Der Grief, and Musée Magazine.
