Project Space Residency

Josh Tonies works across the disciplines of drawing and the moving image. His practice centers around temporary ecological studies that take form as animation, works on paper, and book arts. Recent works include visualizing an arctic soundscape in collaboration with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and using photogrammetry to animate micro-plastics.

For their residency, Josh will produce a series of stop motion animations that resemble time- lapse films, emulating growth patterns of drought and climate change resilient flora. He has primarily been working with varieties from Kumeyaay territories. After filming and scanning the stop motion film, he employs AI-based image generation. Using feedback from this process, he finds breaking points in depth and occlusion to produce novel motion and image expression.

As research for a related publication, he will translate animation frames from these studies into an edition of prints incorporating found images from community, queer archives.

This program is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State Legislature; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Max and Marian Farash Foundation; and Joy of Giving Something.